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The seat-based model is broken

A monthly seat sounds simple, but it punishes the two most common profiles in this market:

Small teams who need power tools occasionally. A two-person fraud desk pays the same per seat as a 100-person SOC. Six months later they're still paying for the seats they barely log into.

Solo researchers and bug-bounty hunters. They might run twenty searches in a week, then nothing for a month. A monthly seat means they're paying for empty days.

Seats also encourage us, the vendor, to artificially restrict tools so "upgrade your plan" remains a constant nag. We don't want to live in that incentive structure.

The credit model in one paragraph

Each tool costs a small number of credits per call. Most are 1–2; exports and big drill-downs are 5–25.

Cached identical queries are free. Hitting the same email twice in the same day doesn't double-charge you.

Bulk packs are cheaper — a 1,000-credit pack costs less per credit than a 100-credit pack, but with no commitment.

Refunds happen automatically when an upstream service errors out with a 5xx — you only pay for results you actually got.

Why credits, not subscriptions

Almost every breach-data vendor charges per-seat per-month. We don't. SquareBreach sells credits — pre-paid units of work — and a search costs a small, predictable number of them.

The seat-based model is broken

A monthly seat sounds simple, but it punishes the two most common profiles in this market:

Small teams who need power tools occasionally. A two-person fraud desk pays the same per seat as a 100-person SOC. Six months later they're still paying for the seats they barely log into.
Solo researchers and bug-bounty hunters. They might run twenty searches in a week, then nothing for a month. A monthly seat means they're paying for empty days.

Seats also encourage us, the vendor, to artificially restrict tools so "upgrade your plan" remains a constant nag. We don't want to live in that incentive structure.

The credit model in one paragraph

Each tool costs a small number of credits per call. Most are 1–2; exports and big drill-downs are 5–25.
Cached identical queries are free. Hitting the same email twice in the same day doesn't double-charge you.
Bulk packs are cheaper — a 1,000-credit pack costs less per credit than a 100-credit pack, but with no commitment.
Refunds happen automatically when an upstream service errors out with a 5xx — you only pay for results you actually got.

What if I prefer monthly billing?

We're working on it. The plan is a credit subscription that grants a fixed monthly allowance with rollover (so unused credits don't evaporate at midnight on the 30th). It'll ship later this year.

In the meantime, top-ups stick around forever — credits don't expire.