11 Aug 2022 by Jonathan Raper
TransportAPI switched over to a more generous Free trial plan in September last year to enable us to showcase more of our managed services to our commercial users. As this free trial allowed access to a large amount of data we restricted it to 30 days as this is normally enough time for a commercial evaluation. However, many home users signed up for this plan but they did not then have options to continue using our data after 30 days.
Meanwhile, we left our original Free plan with 1000 requests in place for existing users while we learned from the changes we had made to the trial. However, the volume of both Free plan and Free trial plan use that we are supporting is now significant and so we need to put some long term arrangements in place.
Over the last few months we have been talking to our home and educational users and they have been telling us what they value about access to TransportAPI. Our users told us that they would be willing to pay a low fee for access to data to power home departure boards or learning experiences, especially if we restored our truly free plan as a backup in case paid access was not possible long term.
We are therefore introducing the Home user plan that allows up to 300 daily requests to TransportAPI per day for £5 per month incl. VAT (with £10 incl. VAT setup fee). This will give access to live/ timetable bus, tube and train data plus places data for stop/station identifiers. The Home user plan is designed for you to be able to monitor your local train station/ bus stop/ tube station using your favourite home automation service or hardware like LaMetric, Home Assistant and Magic Mirror. The new Home user plan allows you to upgrade and downgrade from this plan when you want.
Meanwhile we are re-opening the original Free plan to all users and making it the new default, but with only a very small ongoing daily allowance of 30 free requests to ensure this is sustainable long term for the many thousands of free users we have now. Note that if you are an existing Free plan user who signed up before September 8th 2021 this means that your daily usage will drop from 1000 hits a day to 30 requests for a reduced set of data. If this is not enough data you can upgrade to the paid Home user plan, request to switch to the Free_trial plan for 30 days (now renamed Commercial_Trial) or talk to us about a Managed service if you have specific needs.
To review these plans please login to your TransportAPI account and
browse the options available and the data included in each:
• Free plan now offers 30 requests a day without time limit to a limited
set of data
• Home user plan for 300 requests per day including all live departure
data for £5 per month incl. VAT (with £10 incl. VAT setup fee)
• Commercial trial offering 1000 requests per day for all TransportAPI
data but limited to 30 days and not renewable
You will need to enter your card details into Stripe in your Developer Account if you want to use the Home user plan. Once you have done this you should send an email with your sign up details to support@transportapi.com so we can activate your Home user plan. You will get a monthly invoice on the 1st of the month and you will be charged on the 5th unless you want to raise a query. If you choose the free Commercial trial you will be contacted by us to discuss your requirements so we can suggest the appropriate Managed service to meet your needs.
We look forward to welcoming home/ educational users to our Managed services, and we would love to see links to @transportapi on Twitter to tell us how you are using our data. Meanwhile, we will keep these new plans under review and we will listen to feedback to match them as best we can to your needs.