Swap API Pricing, Limits, and Quotas

Use this page when you need to decide whether your Carbium Swap API traffic still fits a public plan or whether the rollout has moved into a custom-commercial conversation.

The public pricing picture has two parts today:

• api.carbium.io publishes 0.08% per swap as the headline fee signal
• Carbium's live docs publish plan-level request ceilings for Free, Starter, Pro, and Elite

Those two signals answer different questions:

1. whether your request shape fits a published plan
2. how to treat the per-swap fee signal while planning production traffic
3. when the docs stop being specific enough and you should validate terms directly

Part of the Carbium full-stack Solana infrastructure stack.

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What Carbium publicly publishes today

Published commercial signals

Those signals are useful, but they are not the same thing. The public product site is clearer about the headline transaction fee than about how that fee interacts with larger custom arrangements.

📘Use the docs plan table for capacity planning, and treat the headline 0.08% per swap from api.carbium.io as the current public execution-pricing signal. If your rollout depends on custom routing, dedicated infrastructure, or negotiated commercial terms, validate the model directly with Carbium before launch.

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Published Carbium Swap API plans

These are the currently published limits on Carbium's live docs page for Swap API pricing. Treat them as the planning baseline, then verify current terms before a launch, renewal, or enterprise rollout.

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What you are actually buying

For most teams, the practical split is simple:

• Free to prove auth, quote flow, and basic execution wiring
• Starter once real users or live automation are involved
• Pro when request volume and concurrency are part of normal production
• Elite when the standard public ceilings are no longer the real conversation

The important distinction from RPC pricing is that this page is about Swap API traffic shape, not chain-read credits. You are deciding:

• how often your app requests quotes or execution paths
• whether peak bursts fit inside the published request ceiling
• whether your integration needs custom support beyond the public defaults

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Match the plan to the failure you want to avoid

Free

Free is for setup and proof, not for pretending you are production-ready. Use it to:

• verify X-API-KEY auth
• confirm your first Q1 request works
• test one wallet or backend flow end to end

If the app already has real users, multiple environments, or automated trading loops, Free should be temporary.

The failure you are avoiding here is premature spend before the integration even works.

Starter

Starter is the first public tier that makes sense for a real integration. It fits teams that are:

• launching a smaller wallet or embedded swap flow
• running controlled bot traffic
• serving one production app with moderate quote volume

If your architecture is still simple and your traffic is predictable, Starter is the likely first production stop.

The failure you are avoiding here is getting blocked during the first real user or bot rollout.

Pro

Pro is where the plan stops being a launch tier and starts being an operational tier. It is the better fit when:

• quote traffic is continuous, not occasional
• several services or workers share one API budget
• route checks and execution requests happen in parallel

If the cost of dropped or delayed quote traffic is material to the business, Pro is usually safer than running near the ceiling on Starter.

The failure you are avoiding here is treating continuous production traffic like a launch experiment.

Elite

Elite is not just "more of Pro." The public docs position it as the point where the conversation shifts to:

• private endpoints
• dedicated infrastructure discussions
• custom rate limits
• custom commercial terms

If you already know the default public tiers are too small, validate Elite directly with Carbium instead of trying to infer enterprise behavior from the lower plans.

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What the public product page emphasizes

The live api.carbium.io page highlights these Swap API capabilities:

• smart routing across supported Solana DEXs
• transaction bundling
• real-time price feeds
• transaction simulation before execution
• MEV Protection V2
• support for workflows like limit orders, DCA, and portfolio rebalancing

Use those as product-level signals, not as a promise that every feature is documented at the same depth in the public docs today.

For implementation detail, stay on the pages that actually own the workflow:

• Q1 for the current GET /api/v2/quote flow
• Executing Swaps for sign -> submit -> confirm
• Swap API Errors Reference for auth, route, and missing-txn failures

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Upgrade triggers to watch before launch

Move up a plan when one of these becomes normal:

• quote traffic spikes are part of everyday usage, not just tests
• your app has both interactive users and background automation
• one environment is no longer enough and staging starts competing with production
• the team needs custom rate limits, dedicated infrastructure, or negotiated commercial behavior

Do not wait until a launch week to find out that your real request pattern is higher than your plan assumed.

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Before you commit to a larger plan

Run a small production-shaped test:

1. create the API key in api.carbium.io
2. send a real Q1 request against https://api.carbium.io/api/v2/quote
3. measure how often your app requests quotes during actual user or bot flows
4. separate staging, production, user-driven, and automated quote traffic
5. decide whether your quote traffic is smooth, bursty, or shared across services

That gives you a real plan decision instead of a guess based on monthly budget alone.

🔶Choosing a Carbium Swap API plan? Start with the published tiers, then validate the exact commercial path for your production rollout at carbium.io.