A large-scale project to publish machine-readable API pricing, rate limit, and FinOps artifacts for 3,837 API providers in the API Evangelist GitHub network. Three new YAML artifact types were generated: API Commons Plans & Pricing, API Commons Rate Limits, and a FinOps Foundation FOCUS v1.3-aligned cost framework. Of these, 184 Tier 1 providers were manually reconciled with real vendor pricing data, including frontier AI labs, payment platforms, SaaS tools, and cloud providers. The motivation is to close the financial gap in API contracts — OpenAPI describes how to call an API but not what it costs, which is critical for AI agents making autonomous decisions across many providers. Key findings: AI labs like Anthropic and OpenAI are the most transparent; classic SaaS providers are mid-transparent; Fortune 500 enterprises almost universally hide pricing behind partner sales contacts. Next steps include wiring artifacts into APIs.json, publishing feeds at apis.io, and building CI-based reconciliation pipelines.
Table of contents
The Gap I Was Trying to CloseWhat Got GeneratedWhat the Artifacts Look LikeWhat This Exposed About the State of API Pricing TransparencyWhat Comes NextThe PitchSort: