ArcGIS Online

Service Credits Explained

Disclaimer

The terms described in this presentation are valid on May 2, 2019. If you have any questions please contact your local distributor or check this page.

What ArcGIS Online is?

What service credits are?

They are the currency used across ArcGIS Online to measure the use of some cloud services. They are consumed for specific transactions and types of storage such as storing features, performing analytics, and using premium content.

ArcGIS accounts types

Account type	Cost
Developer account	Free
ArcGIS Online Organization Account	Trial (21-days)
ArcGIS Online Organization Account	Paid
ArcGIS Online Public Account	Free
Esri Account	Free

More info about the ArcGIS account types

General questions

What does NOT consume credits?

Many of what you do with ArcGIS Online does not require service credits including accessing or editing data stored in your layers, using most (+95%) of the curated data, exporting your data, some analysis tools (geometric operations, create viewshed, create watersheds, trace downstream), etc.

Note: Using Esri basemaps in your apps does not consume credits but you are limited to using 1 million map transactions per month. Using geosearch in your apps to find a single address does not consume credits but you are limited to 1 million geosearches per month, etc.

What consume credits?

You can use service credits in exchange for storage, analytics (routing, geocoding, demographics API, some spatial analysis) and lifestyle maps.

Use this chart or visit the documentation page for more information.

Note: there are some credit-consuming spatial analysis operations that can also be performed using free services, such as the geometry service or the geometry engine of some APIs/SDKs (JS geometryEngine & projectionEngine).

How often are credits discounted?

Credits are not discounted in real time, update frequency:

Storage: Every hour
Analytics: Updated approximately every 10 minutes
Premium Content: updated approximately every 10 minutes (only demographic maps consume credits at this time)

Read the original explanation @ GeoNet

How are hosted services credit consumption calculated?

Credit Math Example: (Autor: Kelly Gerrow)

If you have 10 MB of feature storage for an entire month, it will cost 2.4 credits for the entire month.

If you publish and delete feature storage throughout the month, the credit charges reflect these changes due to the size of feature storage scheduled hourly.

This isn't the exact math as I have rounded the numbers and estimated the month, but should provide an idea about how the hourly storage is calculated.

Example if you had a 10 MB service and had it hosted in ArcGIS Online for 6 hours, it would be

2.4 credits per month ÷ 744 hours (month of March) = 0.00322 (credits per hour)

0.00322 credits * 6 = total of 0.019 credits for storage for the six hours.

How do I know how many MB my data will consume?

The data storage size is dependent on the actual data, field number and stored geometry in the dataset. Estimations are often inaccurate as all datasets vary. If looking to estimate for budgeting, the most accurate way to determine the size is to upload the data and view the size. Data that is larger than desired can be easily deleted. As mentioned above, short term storage of feature datasets is generally quite low.

Warning: even if you account get blocked, the credits related to featured services will be still charged

Read the original explanation @ GeoNet

How can I avoid to get my account blocked?

Check the amounts of credits you are using in feature storage frequently
Check the number of credits an analysis will take:
- Every interface using any of the ready to use ArcGIS Online REST APIs have a credit calculator you can check before executing it.
- There is also a REST API that can be used programmatically to calculate credit consumption (learn more).
Check the number of credits you have left frequently, but remember that they are not updated in real time.

In short, be careful when using the features that consume credits: analysis services, premium content and storage (more info).

Developer plans

Important considerations

How do they work?

If you signup for free and create a developer account:

You will be enrolled to the ArcGIS Developer Subscription Essentials Plan
You will be provided with one creator user type to be able to use all the non-premium apps provided with ArcGIS Online (web, mobile, desktop), the libraries, SDKs and all cloud services (except the Premium Data Store and ArcGIS for IoT) .
Your account will be configured with the free plan (50 monthly credits) by default

What is a deployment plan?

Do I have to pay when I go to production?

Not necessarily, if your app:

Uses ArcGIS Online
But doesn’t consume more than 50 credits per month
And doesn’t generate any revenue

You can deploy it for free.

Do I have to choose explicitly a billing option when signing up?

No. When you sign up for the ArcGIS Developer Program 50 credits per month are included to develop your applications.

You can choose another option afterwards when going into production, or anytime if you need more then 50 credits per month.

How do I know when my credits will be refilled?

You can check the:

"Renewal date" in your Organization Overview page.
"Credits refresh on" in your Developer Dashboard.
"subscriptionInfo.expDate" at the Portal Self REST endpoint.

Vouchers

Vouchers are special codes that provide you additional free credits for a limited time period of time and they normally delivered in promotional campaigns, developer workshops, etc.

To redeem a voucher you just need to go to developers.arcgis.com/redeem-voucher and introduce the code.

It make take up to 30 minutes for credits to be applied to your account.

ArcGIS Dev. Free plan

Important considerations

How do I choose this plan?

You don't, this is the default for the Essentials plan and:

Includes 50 credits per month (non-accumulable)
Has no costs
Do not expire

What can I do with 50 credits per month?

You can use your credits on any of our hosted services. If you spent all your credits on any one of the hosted services, you'd be able to:

Generate 50,000 map tiles
Store 208 MB of features
Store 41 GB of map tiles
Geocode and store 1,250 addresses
Perform 10,000 routes
Perform 100 advanced routes
Perform 100 drive time calculations
Perform 100 closest facility calculations
Perform 25 delivery optimization routes
Enrich your data with 5,000 variables
Check out 4,545 Infographic views
Draw 50,000 demographic maps
Generate 5 demographic reports
Perform spatial analysis on 50,000 features

What can I do if my account get blocked? (restricted state)

If you are a developer and over exceeded the free 50 monthly credits you can:

Wait until next renewal date when your account will be refilled (+50 credits)
Activate the pay as you go credits using a credit card
Activate the pre-paid monthly credits (contact your local distributor)

Important notes:

Your account will not be reset to 50 credits, if you have less than -50 credits your account will be still blocked.
Check the amount of fixed credits been consumed for the hosted feature services, maybe you should remove some (credits related to featured services will be charged even if your account is blocked)

Pay as you payment option

Important considerations

How does it works?

You can activate it anytime
You'll still have 50 free credits per month
Once the 50 credits have been consumed, your account remains at 0.1 credits and for each credit consumed you will be charged 10 cents of a dollar at the end of the month.

When you will be charged?

At account renewal date.

How long does it take to unlock an account from when I activate this option?

It usually takes between 10 and 30 minutes, but if after 24h it has not been unlocked contact your local distributor.

Monthly pre-paid option

Important considerations

How does it works?

There are several monthly pre-paid plans ( $20 / $90 / $200 / $500 / ... ) and larger plans available for developer accounts.
Each plan will provide you with a fixed number of credits that will be added at the end of the month to you account every month (non-accumulative)
To hire one of them contact your local distributor

What if I go over my plan limit?

You can configure your subscription to allow "overages":

When your monthly subscription runs out of credits you will be charged $.10/credit.
You will be billed at the next billing period or when you've spent $520 worth of credits (4000 credits), whichever comes first.

You can configure your subscription NOT to allow "overages":

When your monthly subscription runs out of credits, your account will be suspended. You can still log in, but your applications will not be allowed to access services that consume credits (such as feature layers, directions, bulk geocoding, geoenrichment or demographic maps).
At the next billing cycle, you will receive a new batch of monthly credits.

You can also upgrade your plan at any time to avoid overages.

Can I downgrade my pre-paid to the free plan?

Yes the monthly plan can go to free, all you need to do is cancel it, and it will then change to Essentials (free) plan the next month.

Organization accounts

Important considerations

How should I manage my credits

Organization accounts works like a pre-paid yearly developer accounts but in this case the ArcGIS Online organization provided support multiple users, role management, credit allocation, etc.

Credits management

Self-Management and Awareness
Enable Credit Budgeting
Create a customer role that includes privileges to services needed
Combine multiple strategies
Monitor members and refine strategy