How do credits work in Cobalt Intelligence's pricing model?

Cobalt Intelligence's pricing model is fundamentally structured around a monthly subscription that allocates a predetermined number of "credits" or "lookups". This design offers a sophisticated blend of predictability for budgeting and dynamic flexibility to scale with your firm's evolving demands.

1. What Constitutes a "Credit" or "Lookup" in the Current Model?

Currently, one credit is equivalent to one Secretary of State (SOS) lookup. This single credit provides a rich dataset critical for comprehensive business verification, enabling a multi-layered approach to risk assessment.

• Integrated Due Diligence Components: At present, each Secretary of State lookup credit comprehensively includes vital ancillary data, such as screenshots directly from the SOS search results, complete with timestamps and watermarks, alongside Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) data. This bundled offering ensures that for a single credit, you receive not just the raw data, but also visual evidence and crucial lien information, forming a robust audit trail for regulatory compliance and internal review.
• Anticipated Evolution for Granular Control: It is important for forward-thinking executives to note that as of March , Cobalt Intelligence anticipates that screenshots will be "parsed out" and may incur an additional cost in the very near future. This transparent pre-notification allows your firm to proactively model and adapt future budgeting and operational strategies, ensuring continuous cost predictability even as the feature set evolves for greater flexibility.
• Broad Service Utility: Beyond SOS lookups, these same credits can be strategically deployed across other critical verification services offered by Cobalt Intelligence, including TIN (Taxpayer Identification Number) verification and access to court cases. This versatility allows your lending institution to allocate resources dynamically across different verification needs, from confirming tax IDs to assessing legal risks, all within a unified credit system.

2. Credit Consumption Dynamics: Balancing Speed and Depth of Verification

The consumption of credits is designed to align with the depth and immediacy of the data required, reflecting the varying operational costs associated with different types of data retrieval.

• Standard Lookup Consumption: A single SOS lookup, encompassing the aforementioned data points like screenshots and UCC data, typically consumes one credit. This straightforward consumption model simplifies planning for routine business verifications.
• Strategic Allocation for Advanced Queries: For more complex or demanding requests, such as multi-state searches that require live data retrieval across multiple jurisdictions, the consumption may be higher, for instance, 3 credits. This differentiated consumption reflects the higher operational overhead involved in dynamically pulling and normalizing real-time data from various state websites, enabling lenders to prioritize deep, live verification for high-risk or critical transactions.
• Optimizing with Cached Data: While Cobalt Intelligence primarily emphasizes real-time data retrieval directly from state portals to ensure the highest accuracy, it also maintains a database cache covering approximately 70-80% of US businesses. Users can elect to query this cache first for faster responses. While the sources don't explicitly detail credit consumption for cached vs. live, the emphasis on speed for cached data implies a strategic choice for less credit-intensive (or potentially free) checks for non-critical or batch processing, reserving live searches (and thus credit consumption) for instances where absolute real-time accuracy is paramount.

3. Non-Rollover Policy: Encouraging Proactive Utilization

A key aspect of Cobalt Intelligence's credit system is that credits do not roll over from month to month. This policy is intentionally structured to promote the efficient and consistent utilization of your subscribed resources.

• Incentivizing Workflow Automation: This non-rollover mechanism encourages lending institutions to deeply integrate the Cobalt Intelligence API into their daily underwriting and compliance workflows. By ensuring consistent usage, firms maximize their investment in automated verification, transforming manual bottlenecks into streamlined, efficient processes.
• Driving Realistic Forecasting: The policy prompts finance and operations teams to conduct more precise forecasting of their monthly lookup requirements. This accurate demand planning ensures that your firm subscribes to the optimal tier, minimizing unused capacity and maximizing the cost-effectiveness of your verification efforts.
• Fostering Continuous Operational Improvement: Regularly evaluating monthly credit consumption against actual needs can illuminate opportunities for further automation and process refinement. This iterative optimization ensures that your team is continually leveraging the API's capabilities to enhance efficiency, reduce human error, and accelerate decision-making across your lending lifecycle.

4. Volume-Based Cost Efficiency: Scaling Your Due Diligence Intelligently

Cobalt Intelligence operates on a volume-based pricing model where the cost per request diminishes as your monthly lookup volume increases. This tiered structure is explicitly designed to reward high-volume alternative lenders and institutional players.

• Direct Economic Advantage for Scale: For firms like 1West, which processes 5,000-6,000 full loan submissions monthly, or IDEA Financial, handling 5,000-10,000 applications each month, a declining cost-per-lookup translates directly into significant operational savings and improved profit margins as volume scales. This is a strategic advantage in the razor-thin margin environment of alternative lending.
• Predictable Unit Economics: As an illustrative example, a plan costing $750 for 1,000 lookups equates to a predictable $0.75 per lookup. This clear unit cost enables financial executives to accurately project verification expenses and assess the return on investment (ROI) for automating manual processes, proving the value of the API in terms of time saved and fraud mitigated.
• Tailored Solutions for Enterprise Needs: While base plans include a set number of monthly requests, Cobalt Intelligence offers the crucial flexibility to provide customized quotes based on your specific anticipated needs and usage volume. This bespoke approach ensures that large institutions and high-growth lenders can align their API investment precisely with their unique operational footprint, avoiding the pitfalls of one-size-fits-all pricing.

5. Transparent Billing and Risk-Free Evaluation: Building Trust and Confidence

Cobalt Intelligence commits to transparent, usage-based pricing with no hidden fees, with billing occurring monthly in arrears. This clarity fosters trust and simplifies financial management for lending executives.

• Eliminating Financial Surprises: The practice of billing monthly in arrears for the exact amount consumed, with no arbitrary "ceiling" imposed, means your finance team will never encounter unexpected overage charges that could disrupt budget forecasts. This predictability is a hallmark of a vendor truly aligned with your financial stability.
• Empowering Rigorous Budget Control: With a clear understanding of the cost structure and direct billing based on actual usage, your financial department gains precise control over operational expenditures. This level of granularity is vital for maintaining healthy profit margins and demonstrating fiscal responsibility in a highly regulated industry.
• Facilitating Strategic Integration Validation: Cobalt Intelligence actively encourages firms to experience its capabilities risk-free. This includes the ability to create a free account for immediate API usage and testing with your own use cases, or to schedule a free demo call for a personalized walkthrough. This commitment to a risk-free evaluation minimizes integration concerns and allows your technical teams to validate the API's seamless functionality, as highlighted by 1West's CTO who found integration "very easy" and completed in "less than a week". Furthermore, discounts are available for annual plans, providing an additional incentive for long-term strategic investment.

By embracing Cobalt Intelligence's credit-based pricing, alternative business lenders and institutional executives can confidently scale their operations, enhance their fraud detection capabilities, and streamline compliance, all while maintaining rigorous control over their financial outlay.