# Fair Use Policy: Rate Limits and Acceptable Use — Ravn

Canonical: https://askravn.com/fair-use

Fair use

# Fast for everyone, always.

Plain rules for how much you can run and what you can run it for.

## Monthly lookups and your spending cap

Ravn is $24 a month and includes 10,000 lookups a month. Beyond that, usage is $1 per 1,000 lookups ($0.001 each), billed monthly, and misses are free. You set a monthly spending cap on usage beyond the plan at any time (default $100; $0 stops at the included 10,000) with `PUT /v1/billing/cap` or `ravn cap <dollars>`. The free plan is 1,000 lookups in total. `get_account` shows your usage and cap.

## When you reach a limit

At your spending cap the API answers `429 spend_cap_reached` with a message explaining how to raise it; lookups resume when you raise the cap or the period renews. A burst of more than 50,000 lookups in 5 hours (an abuse brake, not a plan limit) or an exhausted free allowance answers `429 fair_use_exhausted` with a `Retry-After` header; the CLI waits for it unless you pass `--no-wait`. Nothing is lost: `enrich` saves progress every 25 rows and resumes where it stopped.

## Rate limits

Short bursts are fine. We limit per-second rates and sign-in attempts to keep the service up and stop abuse; limited requests get `429 rate_limited` and are never charged.

## Acceptable use

- Follow the laws that apply to you, including CAN-SPAM, the TCPA, CASL, GDPR and US state privacy laws.

- Never contact anyone who opted out, and never use Ravn for credit, employment, insurance or housing decisions.

- No harassment, stalking or personal lookups. No reselling the data as a data set.

- One organisation per account; don’t share keys across organisations or work around limits.

The full rules are in the [terms](https://askravn.com/terms). Need more volume? Email [support@askravn.com](mailto:support@askravn.com).