Pricing
GroundRoute uses gain-share pricing. There is no flat per-search fee, no percent-of-spend fee, and no cost-plus markup. GroundRoute earns only on the value its cache creates.
The model
| Event | What you pay GroundRoute |
|---|---|
| Cache hit | 50% of the cost the hit avoided (cost_avoided_usd) |
| Cache miss — BYOK | $0 — you paid your own engine |
| Cache miss — managed | pass-through provider cost, no markup |
The consequence: you are never charged more than going direct. On a miss you pay either your own engine (BYOK) or GroundRoute's pass-through cost (managed). On a hit you pay half of what you saved and keep the other half. Revenue scales with cache hit rate, not raw search count.
Worked examples
Assume a search that would cost the engine $1.00 per 1,000 (so $0.001 each).
BYOK, cache miss. Your engine serves it; you pay your provider $0.001. GroundRoute charges $0.00.
BYOK, cache hit. The pooled/private cache serves it. cost_avoided_usd = $0.001. GroundRoute charges 50% = $0.0005. You saved the other $0.0005 versus running it yourself.
Managed, cache miss. GroundRoute's key serves it at the provider's cost. You pay the pass-through $0.001 — no markup.
Managed, cache hit. Served from cache; GroundRoute charges 50% of the $0.001 avoided = $0.0005.
At a per-1k blended engine cost of ~$1.00, a customer at 40% cache pays roughly $0.80/1k (saving ~20%); at 62% cache, roughly $0.69/1k (saving ~31%). The higher the cache rate, the more you save.
Tiers
| Tier | Who pays the engine | What GroundRoute charges | For |
|---|---|---|---|
| BYOK | you | $0 on a miss; 50% of avoided cost on a hit | cost-sensitive teams who run their own engine keys |
| Managed | GroundRoute | pass-through cost on a miss; 50% of avoided cost on a hit | one API, zero engine ops |
The cardinal rule: managed searches are never $0. Managed requires billing on file.
Prepaid credits
Billing is prepaid credits, OpenRouter-style — no monthly subscription or arrears invoice. You buy a credit balance; each charge draws it down. Auto top-up refills the balance from a saved card when it drops below a threshold you set.
- Running out of credit returns
402 insufficient_credit(unless auto top-up refills first). See Errors and limits. has_active_billingmeans either a payment method on file or a positive prepaid balance — both satisfy the managed-search gate.- Every credit change (purchase, usage, top-up, promo) is recorded as a ledger transaction you can review in the console.