> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.tako.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# Contents pricing
> What a Contents download costs — the per-export baseline, the per-row rate, how max_rows drives the bill, and where to read your exact rate before you fetch.
A Contents download is priced by what it returns. A **card CSV export** carries a flat per-export baseline plus a per-row rate. A **web page extraction** is a flat per-page rate. Every price below is also readable from the API before you fetch, so you never have to infer a bill from this page.
## What a card CSV export costs
```
cost = baseline_usd + row_cpm_usd × rows / 1000
```
| Component | Rate |
| - | - |
| Per-export baseline | `$0.001`, charged once per export regardless of size |
| Per-row rate | From `$0.01` per 1,000 rows, and higher for some premium sources |
| Row ceiling | 100,000 rows per export. A larger `max_rows` is clamped to it |
`rows` is the number of rows the export actually returns, which is the smaller of `max_rows` and the rows the card holds. Every returned row is billed, from the first, and a card with fewer rows than your cap bills only the rows it returns.
### A worked example
A 2,000-row card at the base rate, exported in full:
```
$0.001 + $0.01 × 2000 / 1000 = $0.021
```
The same card from a premium source that bills `$0.10` per 1,000 rows:
```
$0.001 + $0.10 × 2000 / 1000 = $0.201
```
## Read your exact rate before you fetch
Do not assume the floor rate. Every downloadable card in a Search or Answer response carries an `export_pricing` object, and its `row_cpm_usd` is **that card's rate for your account** — already adjusted for the card's source and for any negotiated terms on your account:
```json theme={null}
"export_pricing": {
"baseline_usd": 0.001,
"row_cpm_usd": 0.01,
"max_rows_ceiling": 100000
}
```
Put those numbers into the formula above and you get the charge exactly. That is the reliable way to price an export — a rate table on a docs page cannot account for per-source rates or per-account terms, and `export_pricing` can.
`export_pricing` also carries a deprecated `free_rows` field, always `0`. Ignore it; it will be removed.
### Quote without fetching
Send `quote_only: true` on a Contents request to price an export without retrieving it or being charged. You get the `cost` back with no content and no charge. Search and Answer have no equivalent — see [Search inline contents vs. the Contents API](#search-inline-contents-vs-the-contents-api).
## How `max_rows` drives the bill
`max_rows` is the single field that decides the size of a card export, so it is the field that decides the bill.
| `max_rows` | Rows returned | Billed |
| - | - | - |
| omitted | The whole card, up to 100,000, in `url` mode; 2,000 in `inline` mode (20 per card on Search and Answer) | Every row returned |
| a number | That many, up to 100,000 | Every row returned |
| above 100,000 | 100,000 | 100,000 |
Set `max_rows` when you need a slice. A 50-row preview of a premium card costs `$0.006` where the full 2,000 rows cost `$0.201`.
On Search and Answer, `max_rows` is a **per-card** cap. A response holding five cards bills each one separately, each with its own baseline.
### What bounds a multi-card search response
One search response cannot bill without limit, however many cards it holds. All cards share a budget of 20,000 inline rows, spent in card order, so a 20-card request at `max_rows: 100000` returns and bills at most 20,000 rows. A card that arrives after the budget runs out comes back without inline rows. It isn't dropped, and it still carries its own `export_pricing`, so you can fetch its rows through Contents.
`truncated` and `total_rows` tell you when this happened: a card can come back with fewer rows than you asked for because the budget ran out, not because the card was small.
## Search inline contents vs. the Contents API
Card data reaches you two ways, priced identically per row but shaped very differently:
| | Search / Answer inline | Contents API |
| - | - | - |
| How you ask | `sources.data.include_contents: true` | `POST /api/v1/contents` with the card's `webpage_url` |
| Rows when you omit `max_rows` | 20 per card | The whole card, up to 100,000, in `url` mode; 2,000 in `inline` mode |
| Scope of `max_rows` | Per card — a five-card response bills five times | The one card in the request |
| Delivery | Always inline in the response body | `mode: url` for a presigned link, or `mode: inline` |
| Price a call first | Not available | `quote_only: true` |
| Serialization | CSV | `csv`, `json_records`, `json_compact`, or `card_json` |
Both charge the same per-export baseline and per-row rate, so the difference in cost is entirely the difference in rows.
**`quote_only` is Contents-only.** There is no way to price a Search or Answer response before running it. If you need a quote, read `export_pricing` off the card and compute it, or call Contents with `quote_only: true`.
The small inline default is deliberate: a search response can hold many cards, and each one bills separately, so a `/contents`-sized default would multiply the bill by the number of cards in the response. Reach for inline contents when you want a usable preview alongside the results, and for the Contents API when you want the card's full data.
## What a web page extraction costs
Text extraction from a web page is a flat `$0.001` per page. `max_rows` does not apply — it has no rows.
## Where to find what you were charged
* **Per item** — every `ContentItem` carries a `cost` in USD: what that one download cost.
* **Per request** — when your account is billed pay-as-you-go, the response carries a `usage` object whose **`total_cost_usd`** is the request total. (`usage.data` is only the inline-data component, and is omitted when a request inlined none.) On accounts that are not metered per request the `usage` key is **absent**; that is expected, and the per-item `cost` fields are still populated.
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