Perspective API Pricing: free, but here's the real cost
Paul van Schie
Head of Go-to-Market
If you're searching for 'Perspective API pricing', the short answer is: it's free. But "free" doesn't mean it costs nothing. And with the API set to sunset in December 2026, the real question is what your next solution will actually cost.
The TLDR;
- Perspective API is completely free, but there are hidden costs: developer time, human review, zero customization. These add up fast.
- The default rate limit is 1 query per second, and Google stopped accepting quota increase requests in February 2026.
- Alternatives range from free to $500+/month, and a paid tool with built-in workflows often costs less than building around a free API.
Table of Contents
Perspective API Pricing: Free, But Here's the Real Cost
If you're searching for the Perspective API pricing, here's the short answer: it's free. Google has never charged for API calls, and they won't start now. Especially since the service is shutting down after December 2026.
But "free" doesn't tell the full story. Any engineering team that's built around the Perspective API knows there are real costs beyond the API itself: developer hours spent on custom workflows, human reviewers handling edge cases, and infrastructure to turn raw scores into actionable moderation decisions.
Now that the API is sunsetting, there's a pressing question: what will your next content moderation solution actually cost?
This article breaks down the real cost of running Perspective API, then compares it against what you'll pay for alternatives.
What Does Perspective API Cost?
On paper, the Perspective API pricing model is as simple as it gets: $0. Always has been.
Google's Jigsaw team launched Perspective in 2017 as a free, open-access API. There are no tiers, no per-call fees, no monthly subscriptions, and no credit card required. You sign up for an API key through Google Cloud, enable the API, and start making requests.
This made the Perspective API extremely attractive, especially for smaller publishers, non-profits, and open-source projects that couldn't justify a paid moderation budget. Over 1,000 platforms adopted it, from The New York Times to small community forums.
But free access came with strings attached. And those strings are where the real perspective api pricing conversation starts.
The hidden costs of "free"
The API call itself may be free, but running the Perspective API in production has never been free. Here's what platforms actually spend.
Developer time for integration and maintenance
The Perspective API returns a toxicity score between 0 and 1. That's it. What you do with that score (block the comment, flag it for review, warn the user, or adjust the threshold per community) is entirely on your engineering team.
Most platforms need at minimum:
- Threshold logic.
- A queuing system for flagged content.
- A review interface for human moderators.
- Ongoing tuning as false positives pile up.
For a mid-size engineering team, this represents weeks of initial build and continuous maintenance.
Human review for edge cases
The Perspective API can't understand sarcasm, cultural context, or intent. A comment like "I'm going to kill it at this presentation" and "I'm going to kill you" look similar to the model. But the difference matters.
This means every platform using the API needs human moderators to review edge cases. Depending on your volume, that's anywhere from a part-time community manager to a full moderation team. The content moderation services industry charges $50–$99/hour for this kind of work.
No policy customization
Perspective API offers fixed categories: toxicity, severe toxicity, insult, threat, and a handful of experimental attributes. You can't customize these to match your platform's specific policies.
If your dating app needs to catch unsolicited explicit messages, or your gaming community wants to flag griefing behavior, or your marketplace needs to detect scam language... Perspective can't help. You either build a second system alongside it or accept the gaps.
At Lasso Moderation, this is one of the core problems we see teams trying to solve. The API was free, but the workarounds were expensive.
Zero migration support
Google has been clear: when the API shuts down after December 2026, they won't help you migrate. No recommended alternatives, no data export, no transition period tooling. Every platform currently using the API will need to find, evaluate, integrate, and test a replacement on their own timeline and budget.
Planning your migration away from Perspective API?
Our complete guide compares the top alternatives side-by-side — features, accuracy, pricing, and use cases — so you can find the right fit before the December 2026 deadline.
Read the full migration guideRate Limits: The Real Pricing Constraint
The Perspective API is not unlimited. The default rate limit is 1 query per second (QPS). And for many platforms, that's the most important "price" they pay.
What 1 QPS actually means
One query per second sounds reasonable until you do the math. If your platform processes 100 messages per second across 50 active chat rooms, you'd need 5,000 seconds (about 83 minutes) to process just one second of traffic at the default rate limit.
The API handles this in the background, so it won't crash your server. But it means moderation isn't happening in real time. By the time a toxic message gets flagged, the damage is done. The user saw it, other users reacted to it, and your moderators are fighting a backlog.
Requesting a quota increase
Google allows platforms to request higher quotas through a form on the Perspective API developers site. The process isn't automatic. Google reviews each request and decides whether to approve it.
This worked fine when the API was actively maintained. But Google has announced that quota increase requests will no longer be accepted after February 2026. If you haven't already secured the quota you need, you're locked into what you have for the final 10 months of the API's life.
How rate limits affect your real costs
Messages that aren't caught in real time lead to user complaints, community damage, potential legal exposure, and churn. These are hard to quantify but very real.
Modern content moderation tools process requests in real time with no artificial rate caps, because the architecture is designed for it from the ground up.
What alternatives actually cost
With Perspective API sunsetting, the question shifts from "how much does Perspective cost?" to "what will I pay for something better?"
Here's an overview of most of your options, including an evaluation of their total cost of ownership:
| Provider | API price | What you build yourself | Cost at 1M calls/mo | TCO verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Perspective API | Free | Threshold logic, review queues, dashboards, escalation workflows, action layer | $0 API + significant engineering overhead | Free API, but you fund the entire moderation stack around it |
| OpenAI Moderation API | Free | Category mapping, decision logic, review UI, latency workarounds (1-1.5s response) | $0 API + engineering to handle slow responses at scale | Free and quick to test, but latency and fixed categories limit production use |
| Azure Content Moderator | ~$1/1K calls | Custom policies, review workflows, action layer. 10 TPS rate limit workarounds | ~$1,000 | Straightforward pricing, but retiring March 2027. Short-term option only |
| Lasso Moderation | Volume-based | Policy definition during onboarding. Dashboard, workflows, and actions included | Custom (volume-based plans) | Higher API cost than free alternatives, lower total cost when you factor in what's included |
| Amazon Comprehend | $0.0005/request | Moderation logic on top of NLP outputs, threshold tuning, missing category coverage | ~$500 | Reasonable API cost, but heavy engineering to turn NLP outputs into moderation decisions |
| Mistral Moderation | Per-token | Category mapping, latency handling (~1s), decision logic, review workflows | Variable (token-based) | Good for EU data residency needs, but still requires a full workflow layer |
| Google Cloud NL | $0.0005/100 chars | Decision logic, review queues, action layer. Same traditional ML approach as Perspective | $500-5,000+ (varies by text length) | Closest Perspective API swap, but costs scale fast with longer content |
A few things stand out from the comparison of options
Free options exist, but with trade-offs. OpenAI's Moderation API is free with usage caps, but like Perspective, it gives you scores without decisions. You still build the workflow yourself. It also only covers OpenAI's own content categories.
Cloud provider tools charge per request. Azure Content Safety and AWS Comprehend use pay-per-call pricing. This is cost-effective at low volumes but adds up quickly. At 1 million daily requests, Azure alone would cost hundreds of dollars per month — before you factor in the engineering to integrate it.
Dedicated moderation platforms charge monthly. Tools like Sightengine (from $29/month), Hive (custom enterprise pricing), and Lasso Moderation offer subscription models that include the moderation engine, dashboard, and workflow tools. The per-message cost is typically lower, and you're not building everything from scratch.
For a detailed breakdown of which alternative fits your situation, we've put together a complete migration guide comparing features, accuracy, and use cases — not just price.
Total cost of ownership: the Perspective API vs. alternatives
Price per API call is only one piece of the puzzle. The more honest comparison is total cost of ownership (TCO): everything you spend to get content moderation working in production.
The four costs of content moderation
Where Perspective API looks cheap. And where it doesn't
The API cost is $0. But the integration cost is high (no workflow tools, no dashboard, no built-in actions). The human review cost is high (limited accuracy, no context understanding, documented bias). And the accuracy cost is high (over-flagging LGBTQ+ content, missing sarcasm, no custom policies).
When you add these up, many platforms find they were spending more on "free" Perspective API than they would on a paid tool that handles the full pipeline.
Where paid tools save money
Modern moderation platforms reduce TCO by collapsing those four cost layers. The API and the workflow are one product. Human review is reduced because the AI understands context and intent, not just keyword patterns. Custom policies mean fewer false positives, which means less user friction and less moderator time.
The upfront price is higher. But the total cost is often lower.
How to think about your moderation budget
If you're transitioning away from Perspective API, here's a practical framework for budgeting.
Start with your volume
Count your daily content items: comments, messages, posts, images. This is the single biggest cost driver for any moderation solution. At under 10,000 items per day, most solutions are affordable. At over 100,000, pricing and rate limits become critical decision factors.
Factor in content types
Text-only moderation is the cheapest. If you also need image, video, or audio moderation, expect costs to increase. The Perspective API only handled text, so if you're expanding coverage during your migration, build that into the budget.
Decide what you're willing to build
The biggest cost variable isn't the API. It's the engineering. If you want a turnkey solution with dashboards, workflow automation, and built-in actions, you'll pay more per month but save massively on developer time. If you have a strong engineering team and want maximum control, a raw API with lower per-call costs might work.
Don't forget the switching cost
Migrating from Perspective API isn't just picking a new tool. It's recalibrating thresholds, retraining your team on a new system, testing accuracy against your specific content patterns, and potentially re-architecting your moderation pipeline. Budget 2-4 weeks of engineering time for a clean transition.
Planning your migration away from Perspective API?
Our complete guide compares the top alternatives side-by-side — features, accuracy, pricing, and use cases — so you can find the right fit before the December 2026 deadline.
Read the full migration guideFrequently Asked Questions
Is Perspective API free?
Yes. Perspective API has always been completely free to use. No per-call fees, no subscriptions, no tiers. However, it has rate limits (default 1 QPS) and is sunsetting after December 31, 2026.
What are the Perspective API rate limits?
The default rate limit is 1 query per second. You can request an increase through Google, but quota increase requests are no longer being accepted after February 2026.
How much do Perspective API alternatives cost?
Alternatives range from free (OpenAI Moderation API with usage caps) to several hundred dollars per month for dedicated platforms. Pay-per-call APIs like Azure start around $1-2 per 1,000 calls. Subscription-based tools like Lasso Moderation and Sightengine offer monthly plans that include workflow tools, not just an API.
What will it cost to migrate from Perspective API?
The migration cost depends on your current integration complexity. Budget 2-4 weeks of engineering time for the transition itself, plus the cost of your new solution. Google is offering zero migration support, so all switching costs fall on your team.
What's the cheapest content moderation API?
OpenAI's Moderation API and Perspective API (until it shuts down) are both free. However, "cheapest" and "lowest total cost" aren't the same thing — free APIs require significant engineering investment to turn into a working moderation system.
How Lasso Moderation Can Help
At Lasso, we believe that online moderation technology should be affordable, scalable, and easy to use. Our AI-powered moderation platform allows moderators to manage content more efficiently and at scale, ensuring safer and more positive user experiences. From detecting harmful content to filtering spam, our platform helps businesses maintain control, no matter the size of their community.
Book a demo here.
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