What is free, and what needs an account
Factor search is free, and it is meant to stay that way: searching it, reading a factor page and reading its API cost nothing and ask for nobody's name. A free account lifts the search allowance and opens the things that take data away with you, such as an export or a library file. Two things sit outside that, and this page says which.
Every gate in one table#
| What you want to do | What it needs |
|---|---|
| Search factor search and filter what it returns | Nothing, for your first ten searches |
| Sort, page, change the columns, switch language | Nothing, ever. None of it spends a search |
| Open a factor page or a library page | Nothing. Neither is ever metered |
| Ask an eleventh new question in factor search | A free account |
| Read every cell of Values by year and methodology | A free account |
| Take data away: save a factor, export the view, download a library's file | A free account |
Query the open_ef model in SQL |
An email. There is no standing endpoint to point a client at: a copy is arranged on request, and it costs nothing |
| Send one file to the match page | Nothing. The result comes back by email |
| Call the mapping endpoints from your own software | A key, issued on request |
| Read the values of a restricted library | The publisher's own licence, recorded against your account |
Nothing in that table is a trial, and nothing in it runs out for good. The search allowance is the only allowance you can use up, and it heals on its own, without anyone asking. What counts as a search is the page that owns that detail: what spends one, what never does, and when the spent ones come back.
What the free account costs#
An email address and a password. The sign-up prompt states the whole of it: "Email + password. Free. No approval, no card." There is no plan to pick and no approval step to wait for, and you can create it at the moment you hit a gate rather than in advance.
Signing up does not lose your place, though what "your place" means depends on the gate. In factor search it is the whole view: the page address carries your search, your filters and your columns, so you come back to the same rows and the factor you tried to save is still in front of you. A gate that sits on one thing rather than on a view names that thing instead: the download button asks you to create the account while naming the file you asked for, and the locked Values by year and methodology carries its own Create free account, on the factor page in front of you.
Two gates, two reasons, and they are worth telling apart:
- The search allowance protects the service. What it counts is a new question, so a factor page, a library page and a repeat of a search you already ran never spend one.
- The account on an export or a download records who accepted the data terms before a file leaves, and it is how you find your downloads again. The file itself is free.
What stays free#
- Factor search, in full: every value, its unit, region, boundary, year, GWP basis, licence and provenance, for every library served under an open or copyleft licence.
- The standardised files. Each published edition ships two, an XLSX workbook and a CSV bundle, with the publisher's own row kept beside each value.
- The read API at
/factors/api/, which takes no key at all.
The plans page carries both factor search and the open data sync as "Free forever", at zero: open-climate.ai/pricing is where that is stated and kept current. Read it before you build on the data if you need the commitment in writing rather than in these docs.
What is not part of the free tier#
One thing, stated plainly rather than sold: matching at volume. Sending a file through the match page or working through one with an assistant is free to try. Putting matching inside your own product, through the /v1 endpoints or MCP, is the commercial service, priced per correctly mapped line, and the key for it is issued on request. Syncing proprietary libraries you license yourself alongside the open ones is quoted the same way.
The plans page has the current terms for both. Nothing factor search serves sits behind that line.
A licence you already hold#
A restricted library is not a paid tier, and no plan or upgrade opens it. Its activities stay searchable and every value is withheld, for everyone, because its publisher grants no right to redistribute the numbers.
The one thing that changes that is a licence you already hold from the publisher itself, recorded against your account. If you hold the publisher's licence is where that is set out: what it opens, how to ask for it, and the four limits that come with it.
Next#
- Find a factor: what spends a search, and what never does.
- Export to a spreadsheet: the gate most readers meet first.
- Licences and redistribution: what each tier lets you do with a value once you have it.
- Report a wrong value or a newer edition: the other thing an account is not needed for.