Licensing and API access
Updated
starfeed.com is free for people. Automated access is licensed: AI crawlers, AI agents and API or MCP clients buy a key, send it with every request, and can then use starfeed.com's own text and data under the terms below.
1Plans
Prices are in US dollars. Creem, our payment provider, adds sales tax or VAT where it applies. Monthly plans renew automatically; cancel any time and the key works until the end of the paid month.
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- 30,000 calls per month (REST and MCP tool calls)
- Up to 2 requests per second
- 1 key
Internal or personal use. Attribution required.
- 300,000 calls per month (REST and MCP tool calls)
- Up to 10 requests per second
- Up to 3 keys
Results may appear in commercial products and AI answers, with attribution and a link.
- 500,000 page fetches per month
- Up to 5 requests per second
- Up to 3 parallel connections
- 1 key
For AI search and answer (RAG) crawlers: HTML pages, feeds and /llms-full.txt. Attribution and a link required. No model training.
- Custom quota and rate
Custom quota and rate, API and crawling, training rights over starfeed.com's own text, bulk export, contract and invoice.
- +25,000 calls or fetches
Extra calls or page fetches for an active key, valid for 90 days.
Buy only if you already have an active key, and pay with the email address that received it.
2Who pays
- AI training crawlers (for example GPTBot, ClaudeBot, CCBot, Meta-ExternalAgent, Amazonbot, Bytespider).
- AI search and answer crawlers, and AI agents that fetch pages for a user (for example OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, Claude-SearchBot, Claude-User, PerplexityBot).
- Clients of the public API (/api/v1) and the remote MCP server (/api/mcp).
- Scrapers, SEO tools and feed readers that fetch pages automatically.
3What stays free
- People reading starfeed.com in a browser.
- Search engine crawlers that list starfeed.com in public search results, ad crawlers, and link-preview bots that fetch a page when someone shares it.
- Rule and discovery files: robots.txt, llms.txt, licensing.txt, licensing.json and the sitemaps.
4How to buy
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- 1.Choose a plan and press Buy. Checkout opens on Creem, our merchant of record, which takes the card payment, adds tax where it applies and sends the receipt. starfeed.com never sees card details.
- 2.After payment your key (it starts with sfk_) is emailed to the address you used at checkout, usually within a minute. We send it once: keep it in a secret manager.
- 3.Send the key with every request (see below). Usage counts against your monthly quota; responses carry X-Quota-Limit and X-Quota-Remaining.
- 4.To add a top-up to an existing key, use the Top-up button with the same email address. To cancel, use the manage link in your Creem receipt.
- 5.Enterprise and training licences: contact us for a quote.
5Using your key
API and MCP: send Bearer and the key in the Authorization header.
Authorization: Bearer sfk_...Crawlers: send the key in the X-Starfeed-Key header, with a User-Agent that names your crawler and links to its documentation.
X-Starfeed-Key: sfk_...
User-Agent: ExampleBot/1.0 (+https://example.com/bot)Automated requests without a valid key get HTTP 402 Payment Required with a link to /licensing.json. Over quota or rate: HTTP 429 with Retry-After.
Some hosted connectors (for example in Claude.ai and ChatGPT) cannot send a custom header yet; use a client that can, such as Claude Code, Cursor or an SDK.
6Licence terms
- The licence covers starfeed.com's own text and data: summaries, articles, briefings, profiles, rankings and ratings.
- It does not cover third-party material: the linked outlets' reporting, photos under their own licences (for example Wikimedia images under CC BY-SA, whose credit must be kept) and embedded content. starfeed.com cannot license these.
- Attribution: show "Source: starfeed.com" with a link to the page or the returned url.
- API Starter is for internal or personal use. API Pro and the Crawler Licence allow display in commercial products and AI answers with attribution. Model training needs the Enterprise and Training licence.
- No resale, sublicensing or bulk redistribution of the data. A key belongs to one buyer; do not share or publish it.
- We may revoke a key for abuse or for use outside these terms. A full refund or a chargeback ends the licence and revokes the key.
- Quotas reset at each renewal and unused quota does not carry over. Top-ups are valid for 90 days.
7Payment, cancellation and privacy
- Payments are processed by Creem (creem.io) as merchant of record: Creem is the seller on your receipt and handles tax, invoices, refunds and disputes.
- Cancel at any time from the link in your Creem receipt. The key keeps working until the end of the period you paid for.
- If a renewal payment fails, the key keeps working for 3 more days.
- We store the email address you used at checkout (and a company name, if you give one) to deliver keys and answer support requests, plus usage counts per key. We never receive card details. Details: privacy policy.
8Contact
Questions, Enterprise quotes, invoices and key problems: [email protected].