Clarity needed on sponsorship for commercial usage of hosted service

[igregson]

From the About page:

Is there a hosted version?
Yes! If you have light to medium traffic needs, you can sign up for an API key and use a demo API with a soft limit of 1,000,000 tile requests per month. Commercial use of this API requires becoming a GitHub Sponsor, which is meant to offset the cost of running this infrastructure.

Of course, if you’re a heavy user of this API, it becomes more economical to host it yourself.

From the GitHub sponsor page:

Questions:

• When you say "1 million requests per month", what qualifies as a "request" (I assume a single GET request to api.protomaps.com)?
• Do you accept usage significantly over the 1 million requests per month (e.g. 10-20 million / month)?
• If so, is there some type of equation for determining a custom monthly sponsorship amount (for usage beyond the 1 million mark)?

For an example context, consder a company that is:

• Evaluating Protomaps
• Likes the performance and convenience of the hosted service (could roll their own tile update pipeline but would rather not)
• BUT has sizable traffic that would put it significantly over the 1 million mark
• AND is willing to pay what's fair to cover costs (while still being significantly cheaper than using something like Mapbox or Maptiler)

[bdon]

When you say "1 million requests per month", what qualifies as a "request" (I assume a single GET request to api.protomaps.com)

Yes, 1 tile = 1 request. This is different from my SaaS providers which count by "user visits", which would require adding additional telemetry to the client. Some providers instead calculate a "visit" by dividing the tile request by some fixed number like 15. I will clarify this on the Sponsors page.

Do you accept usage significantly over the 1 million requests per month (e.g. 10-20 million / month)? If so, is there some type of equation for determining a custom monthly sponsorship amount (for usage beyond the 1 million mark)?

You can email me at brandon@protomaps.com with your requirements and we can find a solution.

[igregson]

Thanks for clarifying the "request" definition.

Just sent you an email.