Plan costs as the workload changes
cost_scenariosRead-onlyIdempotent
Use this when: the user asks how the cost changes as the workload grows or shifts, or at what volume another plan becomes the cheapest. Do not use this when: the workload is fixed (use search). Show how API plan costs change when the monthly workload changes, for example twice the pages or a larger share of JavaScript pages. Along the path from the current to a target workload it returns the cheapest fully matching plan at both ends, each workload where the cheapest plan changes, and for tracked plans where the cost first steps up, where the plan can no longer cover the volume and where the budget is exceeded. Costs follow published pricing rules (whole packs of extra credits, per-period pack limits, per-connection browser billing, monthly minimums) with official source sentences. Example: 10,000 searches a month growing to 200,000.
Tool call template
This tool declares no required parameters. Add optional parameters from the input schema as needed.
{
"id": 1,
"jsonrpc": "2.0",
"method": "tools/call",
"params": {
"arguments": {},
"name": "cost_scenarios"
}
}Input Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| scale | No | Multiply every monthly count by this factor for the end of the path, e.g. 2 for twice the current workload. Give target or scale. | |
| detail | No | summary returns one source sentence per fact; full returns every recorded fact and sentence. | summary |
| target | No | Workload at the end of the path; fields not given keep their current value. Give target or scale. | |
| mcp_auth | No | Ways to authenticate to the provider's hosted MCP endpoint, any one of which will do: api_key, oauth. Met when the endpoint accepts at least one of them; implies a hosted endpoint. | |
| needs_dpa | No | The vendor must offer a data processing agreement (DPA) to the buyer. | |
| needs_sla | No | The plan must come with a service level agreement (SLA). | |
| needs_zdr | No | Zero data retention must be usable on this plan. A provider that offers it only on a custom enterprise agreement does not meet it on its listed plans. | |
| offer_ids | No | Compare only these plans and follow each of them along the path. Default: every plan that can serve the workload, following the cheapest full match at the start. | |
| preferred | No | Nice-to-have conditions; they do not filter, they break ties. Put a condition the person calls nice to have ("would be good", "if possible", "되면 좋겠다") here, not as a required field. | |
| needs_soc2 | No | The provider must hold a SOC 2 report: true for Type I or Type II, "II" for Type II. | |
| needs_batch | No | The plan must transcribe recorded audio (a file or a stored recording), for speech-to-text. A plan priced for live audio only is not met. | |
| data_regions | No | Regions where data must be stored or processed, e.g. ["EU"]. Different from exit-IP countries. | |
| needs_korean | No | The service must voice Korean text (text-to-speech) or transcribe Korean speech (speech-to-text). | |
| billing_types | No | Acceptable billing: monthly_subscription (A plan with a fixed fee (or minimum commitment) billed every month.) annual_subscription (A plan paid for a year at a time.) pay_as_you_go (No plan fee; a price per unit of use, billed after use or drawn from a balance topped up with any amount.) prepaid_credits (Money paid before use: a credit pack, a balance topped up first, or a plan amount charged in advance for the period.) Free plans always qualify. | |
| monthly_pages | No | Pages per month by type: plain_html (static pages), javascript (needs rendering), premium_proxy (blocked sites that need residential/premium proxies), javascript_premium_proxy (both). | |
| needs_inbound | No | The service must receive email for the buyer and hand it on (inbound parsing, routes), for transactional email. | |
| product_types | No | Limit to these product types. Default: every type that can serve the workload. | |
| search_engines | No | Search engines whose results the plan must return, each at the plan's search price: google, bing, yahoo, yandex, baidu, duckduckgo, naver, brave (brave is Brave's own index). monthly_searches is the total over all of them. | |
| captcha_solving | No | The plan must solve CAPTCHAs for the browser sessions (the vendor does it, not the buyer own service). | |
| min_concurrency | No | Minimum number of concurrent requests (or browsers) the plan must allow. | |
| needs_streaming | No | The service must return audio in real time as it is made (streaming or a WebSocket), for text-to-speech; for speech-to-text, it must transcribe live audio as it arrives. A speech-to-text price line is per mode, so a plan priced for recorded audio only is not met. | |
| monthly_searches | No | Search requests per month (one results page each). | |
| needs_remote_mcp | No | The provider must host a remote MCP endpoint (a URL an MCP client connects to). An official server that can only be run on the buyer own machine does not meet it. | |
| proxies_included | No | The plan must include proxy traffic of the vendor (some gigabytes in the plan fee). Proxy traffic sold only per gigabyte on top of the fee, or only on another plan, does not count. | |
| search_countries | No | ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes of the countries whose search results the searches must return (the search engine's country setting, e.g. Google gl), e.g. ["GB","CA"]. Different from exit_ip_countries. | |
| exit_ip_countries | No | ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes of countries the page requests must exit from, e.g. ["US","DE"]. For search results of a country use search_countries. | |
| min_pages_per_doc | No | Pages one document may have at the most the plan allows, for document parsing. Met when the stated limit is at least this many (or the pages say there is no page limit); a plan whose pages do not state a limit is unknown. The limit of the largest way of sending (batch or asynchronous) counts. | |
| needs_diarization | No | The plan must label who spoke (speaker diarization), for speech-to-text. Where the vendor charges extra for it, the extra price is added to the monthly cost; where the pages state no price or no inclusion the plan is unknown. | |
| needs_no_training | No | An official page must say the vendor does not use the buyer's text, audio or documents to train its models without the buyer opting in. A use that is on by default with an opt-out to ask for does not count. | |
| session_recording | No | The plan must record browser sessions (video or replay) that the buyer can watch afterwards. | |
| needs_dedicated_ip | No | The plan must come with a dedicated sending IP address, for transactional email. A dedicated IP sold only as an add-on on top of the plan, or only on another plan, does not count. | |
| needs_official_mcp | No | The provider must publish its own MCP server (hosted by it or run by the buyer), stated in its official documentation. A server only a third party published does not count. | |
| ai_extraction_pages | No | How many of the pages need their fields extracted by an AI model (from a prompt or a schema, or automatically) without writing selectors. Each page counts in one of the two extraction fields. | |
| min_pages_per_crawl | No | Pages one crawl job (from one start URL, following links) must be able to reach. A plan whose crawl has no page cap meets any number; give the size of the largest site to crawl. Different from the monthly page total. | |
| min_sending_domains | No | Sending domains the plan must let one account authenticate, for transactional email. Met when the stated limit is at least this many (or the pages say it is unlimited); a plan whose pages do not state a limit is unknown. | |
| min_session_minutes | No | Minutes one browser session must be able to run on this plan, for hosted browsers. Met when the stated longest session of the plan is at least this long; a plan whose pages do not state a session limit is unknown, and a limit the page gives only for another plan is not met. | |
| monthly_pages_total | No | Total pages per month when the split by type is not known yet. Costs and verdicts then cover every share of JavaScript-rendered pages from 0% to 100% of the total (no premium proxies), and the result lists monthly_pages under needs_input. | |
| needs_voice_cloning | No | The plan must let the account clone a voice from its own recording, for text-to-speech. Cloning limited to eligible customers, a request form or an enterprise plan does not count for a plan that is not that plan. | |
| persistent_profiles | No | The plan must keep browser profiles (login state, cookies) between sessions. | |
| search_result_types | No | Result types the parsed search response must contain: organic, ads, local_pack, knowledge_graph, people_also_ask, related_searches, shopping, news, images, videos, ai_overview. | |
| max_monthly_cost_usd | No | Monthly budget in USD before tax. Compared with listed prices; annual plans use their per-month equivalent. | |
| needs_batch_discount | No | An official page must say a batch or asynchronous way of sending documents costs less than the list price on the plan, for document parsing. The budget and the cost are judged at the list price, not at the batch price. | |
| needs_commercial_use | No | The plan must allow commercial use of the generated audio, for text-to-speech. A free plan limited to non-commercial use does not count; a plan whose pages do not say is unknown. | |
| needs_no_min_billing | No | An official page must say audio is billed by the second (or an increment of seconds) with no minimum billed duration per request, for speech-to-text. A page that says nothing about rounding is unknown. | |
| needs_webhook_events | No | The plan must send webhook events to the buyer's server (the vendor calls an address of the buyer when something happens). | |
| needs_signed_webhooks | No | The plan must deliver webhooks that the buyer can verify by a signature (a signing secret or a signed endpoint). | |
| max_overage_usd_per_1k | No | The most the plan may charge for each 1,000 emails beyond its included volume, in USD, for transactional email. A plan whose extra price is not published as a per-1,000 figure is unknown. | |
| min_log_retention_days | No | Days the plan must keep the logs or events of sent email where the account can read them, for transactional email. Longer retention sold as an add-on does not count. | |
| needs_table_extraction | No | The service must return the tables of a page as structure (rows and cells), not only the text, for document parsing. | |
| search_returns_content | No | The search response itself must carry the text of the result pages (extracted content), not only titles, links and snippets. | |
| min_requests_per_minute | No | Minimum request rate the plan must allow, per minute. | |
| browser_seconds_per_page | No | Browser time per page in seconds, for headless-browser products billed by time. Every plan must then serve pages that take this long: a hosted browser does, a request-based API only when one request may run that long. | |
| realtime_search_required | No | Search results must be returned in real time (not through a queue). | |
| target_errors_not_billed | No | Error responses from the target site (e.g. 404) must not be billed. | |
| needs_recurring_free_tier | No | The plan must be usable every month without paying (a free plan with a monthly allowance or a monthly free credit). | |
| failed_requests_not_billed | No | Requests that fail on the provider side (timeouts, blocks, 5xx) must not be billed. A flat monthly price for unlimited requests meets it, since no request is billed on its own; when only success-based billing will do, use only_successful_requests_billed. | |
| structured_extraction_pages | No | How many of the pages must come back as JSON fields rather than HTML or text, by any method the plan offers (CSS or XPath selectors, a schema, or AI). When the fields must be found without writing selectors, use ai_extraction_pages instead; each page counts in one of the two. | |
| only_successful_requests_billed | No | Billing must count successful requests only: each successful request is charged (or draws credits) and failed ones cost nothing. A flat monthly price for unlimited requests does not meet it, since the price is the same whatever succeeds. |
Output Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| path | Yes | ||
| as_of | Yes | ||
| notes | Yes | ||
| plans | Yes | Every plan named above, with the official facts its costs were computed from. | |
| at_end | Yes | Up to three cheapest full matches at the target workload. | |
| counts | Yes | ||
| request | No | ||
| tracked | Yes | ||
| at_start | Yes | Up to three cheapest full matches at the current workload. | |
| compared | Yes | ||
| switches | Yes | Each workload on the path where the cheapest full match changes. | |
| link_notes | No | The note of each link level (link.link_level) of the plans in this result, stated once. | |
| assumptions | Yes | ||
| needs_input | Yes |