How Iframely billing works
What is a hit
On Iframely, a "hit" represents one hour of activity for a specific URL on the platform. During that hour, all requests required to fetch or optionally display the content are grouped into a single hit.
In practice, one hit usually includes 1-4 API requests or around 5-15 iframe views for the same URL within the hour. Higher traffic does not increase the number of hits proportionally - instead, requests are aggregated, so the hit-to-traffic ratio decreases as usage grows. A single URL can generate up to 24 hits per day, regardless of how many times it is viewed within each hour.
How hits are counted
For billing purposes, Iframely counts hits in hourly increments. Every time a URL is active during a particular hour, it registers one hit for that hour. Even if a page gets refreshed multiple times or is viewed by thousands of visitors within the hour, the URL only counts as one hit for the entire hour.
For example, if a Facebook post is embedded on a webpage and that page receives 1,000 views within an hour, it still only counts as one hit. However, if that page continues to get views for 24 hours, the URL will register 24 hits for that day — one hit per active hour.
What if I go over my plan hits limit
One week before your billing period ends, Iframely will project how many hits you’re likely to accumulate by the end of the cycle. If the system identifies a more suitable plan for your usage, we will notify you via email, recommending a better plan that will save you money.
If you exceed the number of hits allowed by your plan, you’ll be charged for additional hits at the end of your billing cycle.
Hosted iframes and API endpoints
Our hosted iframes are part of the APIs for billing purposes. This means that, like all other API endpoints, each unique URL embedded via an iframe is counted once per hour.
The same applies to Content IDs , which are simply aliases for other API endpoints. They follow the same logic, counting one hit per hour of activity.
While hosted iframes provide data in HTML format rather than JSON or XML, the workload of maintaining the source data is similar, which is why the billing logic is the same for Iframely.