Comparing GeoIP Database and Web Service Pricing

The most economical pricing model for your business will depend on many factors, some of which may not be restricted to the price of the data. For example, some customers may not have the infrastructure to reliably host their own databases, while other customers may have business restrictions or agreements with their customers that require them to host the data themselves. Learn more about the differences between GeoIP databases and web services.

Pricing per-query versus subscription pricing

GeoIP databases may be queried as much as you would like for a flat cost per month or year, while GeoIP web services are priced per-query. Because of this, there is a cut-off point at which, all other things being equal, it is more cost effective to go with GeoIP databases than with the web services.

For example, the GeoIP Country web service costs $0.0001 per-query, and the GeoIP Country database costs $34/month. You would have to use 340,000 queries from the GeoIP Country web service to get to $34/month so, if you expect to do more than 340,000 lookups per month, the GeoIP Country database would be more economical than the GeoIP Country web service.

Volume cut-offs where database pricing becomes more cost-effective

You can consult the chart below to find out how many queries of a given web service it would take to equal the cost of its nearest database equivalent. If your estimated monthly query volume for your non-commercial use case is greater than or equal to the value in the "Monthly Query Volume Cut-off," then it would be more cost effective to purchase the GeoIP database. If your estimated query volume is less than that value, it would be more cost effective to use the GeoIP web services:

The chart above includes some combinations of databases. For example, the GeoIP City, ISP, and Domain databases all bundled together include nearly equivalent data to the GeoIP City Plus web service. You can mix and match your own database subscriptions to figure out the volume of queries where it would make sense to switch to the databases.