GST API price comparison
Published GST API prices are not comparable as written: they use different units, cover different scope, assume different commitments, and expire on different schedules. This page gives you the method to collapse all of that onto one number, the nine inputs to collect from every vendor, and our own rates stated plainly so you can put us in the same spreadsheet.
What you will not find here is a table of competitor prices. We do not publish numbers we cannot audit and that change without notice — you will get better answers by sending the nine questions below to each vendor and comparing the replies.
The one number to rank on
Effective cost per useful verification
(annual spend + credits that expire unused + subscription floor you will not consume) ÷ verifications that returned an answer you could act on
The numerator is money that leaves your account. The denominator is decisions, not HTTP requests — so it excludes duplicates you queried twice, invalid GSTINs you paid to reject, and partial responses you had to supplement from somewhere else. A vendor charging ₹0.30 for a record that needs a second ₹0.30 call is charging ₹0.60, and loses to a vendor charging ₹0.40 for a complete one.
Normalising the four pricing models
Nearly every provider uses one of these four shapes. Convert each into the formula above before comparing anything.
Pay-as-you-go credits
- Normalise it
- Rate × your annual verifications, plus the value of any credits that expire unused.
- Watch for
- Expiry windows, and whether a volume discount applies to the whole purchase or only the excess.
Volume-tiered packs
- Normalise it
- Use the tier your real annual volume reaches — not the best tier on the page.
- Watch for
- Thresholds quoted per month versus per purchase; the difference can be several times your bill.
Monthly subscription
- Normalise it
- Twelve months of fees ÷ verifications you will genuinely make.
- Watch for
- Overage rates, unused allowance in quiet months, and the notice period.
Annual enterprise contract
- Normalise it
- Contract value ÷ forecast verifications, plus onboarding and integration time.
- Watch for
- Minimums, true-ups, and what it costs to leave if the data disappoints.
Nine inputs to collect from every vendor
Send these as one email to every shortlisted provider, including us. Vendors who answer all nine in writing are usually the ones worth buying from — the reluctance itself is data.
| Input | Question to ask in writing |
|---|---|
| Headline rate | What is the per-verification price at my forecast annual volume? |
| Calls per answer | Does one call return registration details and GSTR filing history together? |
| Billable failures | Which responses draw a credit — malformed input, unregistered GSTIN, 429, upstream 5xx? |
| Commitment | Is there a minimum purchase, a monthly floor, or an annual contract? |
| Expiry | How long do purchased credits last, and what happens to the remainder? |
| Freshness | How long do you cache a taxpayer record, and what invalidates it? |
| Rate limit | What is the documented per-key limit, and how is a 429 signalled? |
| Trial | Can I call real GSTINs today without speaking to anyone? |
| Exit | What is the notice period, and can I export what I have already verified? |
Each trap behind these questions is catalogued in hidden costs of a cheap GST API.
Our answers to all nine
Disclosed interest: we sell one of these APIs. Here is our row of the spreadsheet, so you can fill in the others and compare.
| Input | Our answer |
|---|---|
| Headline rate | ₹0.50 per verification; ₹0.40 once a single purchase crosses 2,500 credits |
| Calls per answer | One — registration record and GSTR filing history in the same response |
| Billable failures | Format and check-digit failures are not billed; upstream 502s are not billed; an unregistered but well-formed GSTIN is a real answer and draws a credit |
| Commitment | None — no subscription, no floor, no contract, no notice period |
| Expiry | Purchased credits carry the expiry shown at purchase; free signup credits expire 30 days after issue; unused credits are non-refundable |
| Freshness | Upstream taxpayer responses cached for a window measured in hours, not days |
| Rate limit | Throttled per key, sized for typical integration volume; ask before a high-throughput run |
| Trial | 20 credits on email verification against real GSTINs, plus five public lookups a day with no account |
| Exit | Nothing to cancel; stop calling and the balance sits until its expiry |
The response fields behind "calls per answer" are listed in the API docs, and the published tiers on the pricing page.
Compare correctness before you compare price
A spreadsheet ranks vendors on money. It cannot rank them on whether the answer is right, and a wrong answer has negative value: a stale "Active" on a cancelled registration means a payment released, an input tax credit blocked, and a reconciliation later. So run the cheap test first.
- 1. Take 200–500 GSTINs from your own records, including ones you know are cancelled, suspended or newly registered.
- 2. Validate them locally first so typos never become billable calls — the GSTIN validator is free.
- 3. Run the same sample daily against each shortlisted provider for ten working days, storing every raw response.
- 4. Diff day over day. Fields that flip and flip back are a caching problem; fields that never move on an entity you know changed are a staleness one.
- 5. Now apply the price formula, to the providers that passed.
The full evaluation protocol is in how to choose a GST verification API provider.
Price comparison — common questions
Put us in your spreadsheet
Twenty free credits, real GSTINs, no card and no sales call — enough to run the correctness test before any comparison.