PayloadAPI Refund & SLA Policy

PayloadAPI provides a transparent, developer-first API marketplace connecting API consumers with verified API providers. We believe pricing, cancellations, and refunds should be predictable, fair, and free of dark patterns.

This Refund and Service Level Agreement (SLA) Policy governs all paid subscriptions, usage tiers, and credit adjustments on PayloadAPI. This policy operates in conjunction with our Terms of Service and Privacy Notice.

We understand that evaluating an API requires real-world testing in your software architecture. If an API does not meet your requirements, you are entitled to a full 100% refund on your subscription fee within seven (7) calendar days of initial purchase or plan upgrade.

Once confirmed, the refund instruction is immediately dispatched to our Merchant of Record, Paddle. Funds are credited back to your original payment method (credit card, PayPal, or wire transfer) within 3 to 5 business days, depending on your financial institution.

To prevent fraudulent scraping and resource exploitation while protecting legitimate testing, self-serve refunds require satisfying two transparent conditions:

• Time Window: The refund must be requested within seven (7) calendar days (168 hours) of the subscription order timestamp.
• Quota Consumed: Less than ten percent (10.0%) of the plan's included meter quota (requests, tokens, or compute units) must have been consumed during the current cycle.

The Workspace refund interface displays a live diagnostic breakdown showing exact consumed units, remaining time, and eligibility status before you confirm.

4.1 Platform Edge Availability Target (99.95%)

The PayloadAPI Edge Gateway is distributed across 300+ edge locations worldwide. We commit to a minimum monthly data plane uptime of 99.95%.

4.2 Outage Credit Schedule

If edge gateway availability or a verified upstream provider with a contracted SLA falls below commitments in any given calendar month, affected subscribers are entitled to service credits:

• 99.00% to 99.94% Uptime: 10% credit applied against the monthly subscription fee.
• 95.00% to 98.99% Uptime: 25% credit applied against the monthly subscription fee.
• Below 95.00% Uptime: 50% credit applied against the monthly subscription fee.

Service credits are automatically applied against your subsequent billing cycle or overage invoice.

SLA claims can be submitted directly within your Workspace:

• Navigate to Workspace > Subscriptions and select the affected API subscription.
• Click File SLA Claim to open the incident modal.
• Specify the Incident Start and End timestamps, select the affected endpoint, and provide relevant error telemetry (e.g., HTTP 5xx responses or timeout traces).

Our automated telemetry auditing engine correlates your report against edge routing logs and upstream probe health checks within forty-eight (48) hours. Verified claims automatically apply credit to your organization ledger.

You may cancel your API subscription at any time directly through the Workspace console:

• No Lock-in: There are no cancellation fees, hidden termination penalties, or minimum commitment periods for standard tiers.
• Continued Access: When you cancel a subscription, your API credentials and remaining monthly quota remain fully active through the conclusion of the paid billing period.
• No Auto-Renewal: Upon cycle completion, the subscription transitions to expired status, and no further recurring charges will be billed.

7.1 Zero Surprise Billing

To prevent unexpected overage bills, all plans enforce hard request and meter caps by default at the edge data plane. When your quota limit is reached, requests return HTTP 429 (PX_QUOTA_EXCEEDED) without incurring charges.

7.2 Opt-In Overages & Strict Budget Caps

If you choose to enable overages for continuous service availability, you must explicitly set a maximum monthly budget cap in your Workspace. Once this cap is reached, requests are safely throttled until the next cycle or until you adjust your budget.

Our order process is conducted by our online reseller and Merchant of Record, Paddle.com Market Ltd ("Paddle"). Paddle provides customer service inquiries and handles returns, VAT/sales tax compliance, currency conversions, and fraud screening.

All payment transactions, checkout receipts, and tax invoices are issued under Paddle's Merchant of Record framework. If you experience an unresolved billing issue, you may also reach out directly to Paddle support athelp.paddle.com.

PayloadAPI charges a flat 10% platform commission on collected net paid usage. Provider disbursements are structured to accommodate consumer refund windows and chargeback disputes:

• Verified Low-Risk Providers: 90% of earnings are disbursed on a rolling T+7 schedule, with 10% held in a 28-day rolling reserve to satisfy potential refund or SLA claims.
• Standard Providers: Earnings are disbursed on a T+28 schedule following completion of initial consumer review periods.
• Refund Deductions: If a consumer receives an approved refund within the 7-day window, the corresponding provider subtotal and platform commission are reversed.

Refunds are not granted in the following scenarios:

• Requests submitted more than seven (7) days after the initial transaction date, unless governed by an approved SLA outage claim.
• Subscriptions where more than 10.0% of the included quota was consumed during the billing cycle.
• Accounts suspended or terminated due to violations of our Acceptable Use Policy (e.g., distributing malware, credential stuffing, scraping, or deliberate denial of service).
• Custom enterprise contracts with bespoke billing schedules that explicitly override standard marketplace refund terms.

For questions regarding billing reconciliations, charge discrepancies, or manual refund reviews, our dedicated finance team is available to assist:

• Billing Support: billing@payloadapi.com
• General Support: support@payloadapi.com
• Workspace Console: Submit tickets directly from Workspace > Help & Support