Build with the same data that powers Civic Stream.
Live federal, state, and local government meetings. Structured election data. Daily congressional schedule. Politician profiles. Breaking civic news. One key, one base URL, and prices that come in under what comparable services charge.
Pricing
Monthly billing. Cancel anytime. Free tier needs no card.
Civic (Free)
- Core civic records: streams, news, schedules, elections, representatives, politicians, bills, and committees
- 10,000 requests / month
- 30 requests / minute
- Up to 25 records per request
- Attribution required
- Non-commercial use only
Starter
- Everything in Civic
- 250,000 requests / month
- 120 requests / minute
- Commercial use OK
- Local civic overview, unified search, richer filters, and up to 100 records per request
- Webhooks: live streams, breaking news
Pro
- Everything in Starter
- 2,000,000 requests / month
- 600 requests / minute
- Historical elections back to 2018
- Bills full-text
- Campaign finance, race history, schedule recaps, district geometry, and change feeds
- 99.5% uptime SLA
Business
- Everything in Pro
- 10,000,000 requests / month
- 2,000 requests / minute
- Daily-cached bulk JSON exports
- Up to 500 records per request and 25 webhook endpoints
- 99.9% uptime SLA
Enterprise
- Everything in Business
- Custom or unmetered quota
- Custom endpoints
- White-label, no-attribution
- Signed video URLs
- Named customer success manager
Every self-serve tier has a predictable hard monthly cap. Contact us before a launch if you need a custom quota or unmetered Enterprise plan.
Why CivicStream
Coverage and pricing the incumbents don't match.
Real video, not just metadata
Every meeting record links to its CivicStream watch page and includes live status and public metadata. Raw upstream playback and embed URLs are intentionally not exposed.
Federal, state, and local
City councils, school boards, planning commissions — the layer most civic APIs skip. We cover all 50 statehouses plus 500+ municipalities.
Half the price, no surprises
Our Pro plan is ~40% under comparable Congress / elections APIs — with overages at $0.50 per 10k instead of $1+ per 1k.
Honest free tier
10,000 requests / month, no card, no trial expiry. Use it for hackathons, civic-tech projects, or a side project that never grows up.
FAQ
Can I use the free tier commercially?
No — Free is for civic tech, journalism, students, and personal projects. Anything ad-supported, paywalled, or sold to clients needs Starter or higher. We don't audit small projects, but we do throttle and revoke for clear commercial abuse.
How do overages work?
On paid tiers, calls past your monthly quota bill at $0.50 per 10,000. There's no hard cutoff unless you hit the per-minute burst limit. Free hard-stops at the cap until the next calendar month.
Can I swap plans mid-month?
Yes. Upgrades take effect immediately and are pro-rated. Downgrades take effect at the next billing cycle so you don't lose what you paid for.
Do you offer non-profit / journalism discounts?
Discounts are available to certain institutions on request, but we make the final call. Contact us to ask.
Are stream links available with the API?
No — the public API returns live status and metadata only, never stream URLs. Bulk stream links can be provided to Enterprise customers on request. Contact sales to discuss.
What attribution is required?
“Data via CivicStream” with a link, somewhere on the screen that renders the data. Waivable at Enterprise. We're not picky about typography — just don't bury it.