Watt Data bills for value, not for discovery. Finding a trait, listing clusters, or geocoding a place is a step on the way to the value you came for — so those calls are free. You're charged when a tool delivers data from the graph or runs analysis over an audience.
Two billing bases
Value tools come in two kinds, and they meter differently:
- Delivery tools sell rows out of the graph. They bill delivered fields — one dense cell in the response (a single row × a single column holding a real value). Null, missing, and empty values don't count. A response of 1,000 people with 3 populated columns each is 3,000 fields; empty cells aren't billed.
- Analysis tools sell computation over an audience. They bill graph-traversal footprint — the graph signals the computation actually walked to produce the answer, regardless of how many rows are echoed back. Asking for the top 20 results bills the full work behind them, not just the 20.
What's billed
Delivery tools — billed on delivered fields:
| Tool | Usage accrues as |
|---|---|
entity_find | matched audience size × the columns returned in the sample |
entity_enrich | rows returned × the enrichment columns populated |
entity_resolve | resolved entities × the columns returned |
entity_relations | total relations returned × 4 (the fixed relation schema) |
entity_traits | matched entities × (trait expressions evaluated + 1) |
resolve_and_enrich_rows | output rows × output columns |
Analysis tools — billed on graph-traversal footprint:
| Tool | Usage accrues as |
|---|---|
calculate_trait_lift | every trait scored against the world baseline (one baseline traversal per trait), not the top_n rows returned |
group_entities_by_trait | trait signals traversed across the audience (enriched entities × distinct trait signals found), not the trait_limit groups returned |
What's free
Discovery and utility tools consume no usage units. Use them freely to find what you need and move data in and out:
- Discovery —
trait_search,trait_get,geocode_location, and browsing thetrait://resource - Utility —
generate_upload_url,generate_download_url,submit_feedback
Reliability and latency
Every tool — billed or free — is measured for reliability (error rate) and latency. Only consumption is scoped to the value tools above.