Billing and Limits

Fleet API is available through a pay-per-use pricing model which charges incrementally based on usage. The home page contains high level pricing details.

What developers need to know:

• Starting February 1, 2025, applications will begin accruing charges based on API usage. Billable events accumulated in December 2024 and January 2025 will not be billed.
• Billing cycles are monthly and begin on the first day of the month.
• At the end of a billing cycle bills are due and an invoice will be available in the developer portal. The payment method on file will be automatically charged 14 days after the end of the month.
• Billing reminder emails will be sent once a bill is due. After 30 days of no payment, Tesla reserves the right to disable API access, as outlined in the Fleet API agreement.
• A monthly discount of $10 is provided to support individual developers/small applications.
• All requests with a status codes below 500 are counted as billable usage. Status code 500 and above are not billed.
• Each request or signal in the pricing categories will be charged at the rate indicated. Charges will be rounded to the nearest $0.01. For example, using 1,211 commands will incur a charge of $1.21.
• Each endpoint's pricing category is available in the API documentation. Click the + icon to expand the endpoint's details and view the "Pricing Category" section.

Pricing category shown on each endpoint.

By default, each account has a billing threshold corresponding to the discount described above. This threshold can be increased once a payment method is added to the account. It is recommended to configure a billing threshold to prevent unexpected bills. Current usage is available on the billing and usage page of the application management dashboard.

An email notification will be sent when 80% of the usage threshold has been reached. Another email will be sent when the usage threshold has been reached.

Billing Threshold Exceeded:

If the billing threshold is exceeded, API usage will be suspended and any vehicles configured for Fleet Telemetry will have their streaming configurations removed. Access will be re-enabled once the billing threshold is raised or a new billing cycle begins. ⚠️ Fleet Telemetry configurations will not be restored. ⚠️

Application access will not be disabled during the payment transition period which ends December 31, 2024. To ensure uninterrupted API access, configure a payment method and billing threshold prior to this date.

To set a threshold, navigate to the billing and usage page of the application management dashboard and select "Update Limit". Note that actual charges may be slightly higher than the billing threshold.

Fleet API has rate limits in place to prevent excessive usage. Applications should not reach these limits under typical operation.

The limits are tracked per device, per account:

• Realtime Data: 60 requests per minute
• Wakes: 3 requests per minute
• Device Commands: 30 requests per minute

An account can have multiple developer applications. If an account has multiple developer applications interacting with the same vehicle, these limits are shared.

Applications are recommended to take the following actions to reduce billable events.

• In most cases, frequently waking vehicles is a sign of improper application design.
• Ensure the vehicle is online before requesting device data or sending commands. Connectivity state can be monitored through Fleet Telemetry (preferred) or the vehicle endpoint.
• Analyze the response of signed commands and act on errors before resending any commands. For example, if the response states the Fleet Key is not present on the vehicle, add the key to the vehicle before retrying.
• Migrate from polling the vehicle_data endpoint to using Fleet Telemetry.

Migrating to Fleet Telemetry offers a number of benefits.

• Applications only receive the data they are interested in.
• Vehicles automatically send data when they are awake and connected to the internet.
• Signals are only sent when their value changes, meaning applications are not incurring charges for fields that are not changing. With vehicle data, an application must continually poll for data.
• Data is available at high frequency with low latency.

Note: Older S/X vehicles do not support Fleet Telemetry. Reach out to support for alternative solutions.

The pricing structure heavily incentivises development practices that improve customer experience and vehicle efficiency. Here are real-world examples of cost optimisations for applications using Fleet API. These optimizations offered comparable functionality.

In a test session lasting 30 minutes, the application was in the foreground and actively used for 15 minutes. Throughout the session, the user sent four commands and clicked around in the app.

Count of billable events:

• Device Data: 384 requests
• Commands: 4 requests
• Wakes: 4 requests
• Streaming Signals: 0 signals

The total cost of this session, before optimization, is $0.852.

After migrating to Fleet Telemetry and optimizing application logic, the billable events could be reduced to:

• Device Data: 0 requests (Fleet Telemetry is used for gathering realtime data and validating command execution)
• Commands: 4 requests (commands cannot be reduced)
• Wakes: 1 request (the vehicle was online for each command after the first one. See monitoring vehicle connectivity state)
• Streaming Signals: 300 signals (introduced to eliminate the need for Device Data polling)

The cost of this session, after optimization, is $0.026. This is a cost reduction of 97%.

A business with a large fleet of vehicles streams 70 signals. The data collection interval per field ranges from 60 seconds to 10 minutes, resulting in approximately 1000 signals streamed per hour. This equates to a cost of $0.00667 per hour per car via Fleet Telemetry.

Receiving the same information via vehicle_data yields a cost of $0.12 per hour. This is a cost reduction of 94%!