

The Wolfram Alpha API Has Arrived - edw519
http://blog.wolframalpha.com/2009/10/15/the-wolframalpha-api-has-arrived/

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trafficlight
$60 for 1000 requests just for protyping and personal use? Do they actually
want anybody to use their product?

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karzeem
It's stunning. For commercial use (i.e. the way that a huge number of startups
would like to use this), the cheapest option is $2000/month.

They say to contact them to tailor it to your needs, so maybe they're willing
to come way down from that number.

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gfodor
There really is no better response than: hahahahahahahahahahahaha!

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jasonlbaptiste
If you want an example of how NOT to launch an API and get developers on
board, take a look at Wolfram's API.

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slig
They lost me before that, precisely on "download a pdf to see the api docs".

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lpolovets
The prices seem insanely high, and the most expensive plan also has a bizarre
structure (<http://products.wolframalpha.com/api/pricing.html>). After you
pass your initial 10 million request quota, the per request price is higher
than during the quota! This means if you're doing 50 million requests, it's
cheaper to buy 5 API keys w/10 million requests than to have one API key doing
all 50 million. I would've expected that Wolfram encourage higher usage
w/deeper discounts _especially_ when you reach the top, not _until_ you reach
the top.

I also wonder if ~6 cents/request is supply and demand or maybe gree, or if
the system is so complex and sophisticated that they actually need to charge
that much to pay for the computational requirements.

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gjm11
_All_ their plans have that structure. I'm guessing that they want to be able
to plan what resources to give to Alpha on the basis of what their customers
have signed up for, so they want to discourage "overuse". Also, you pay up
front for the quota and presumably pay in arrears for any extras, so obviously
they want to encourage you to pay earlier.

(Still seems pretty daft to me, though.)

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babyshake
Charging developers to try out your API. Questionable. If anything, don't they
want to do everything they possibly can to attract developers?

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adatta02
That is the first thing I noticed also. the pricing is non-trivial to. $60 for
1k/day requests? damn

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gcampbell
I believe that's $60 for 1k _total_ requests - you use those up, you need to
pay $60 more.

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hegemonicon
What has been created here is a new kind of API, one the result of a lifetime
of experience, and one that will no doubt influence the way you think about
programming for years to come.

How fortunate you all must feel to use this API, and to interact with this
amazing, lifechanging software. I don't think I exaggerate when I say that
within this API lies the ability to understand our very universe.

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cscotta
I went ahead and posted this comment on the blog post. It'd be great to be
able to at least have a sandbox to build a library for communicating with the
API to test out libraries and clients under development. Without something
like that, I really don't see open, robust client libraries being built, and
driving adoption in applications and around the web.

\---

 _I'm surprised that no one has said this yet, so I'll step up.

This is massively expensive.

Releasing an API without offering developers any way to build client libraries
for Ruby, Python, and other languages short of ponying up $60 to test their
client (or even offering a sandbox for sample data) is a bit much.

I'd be interested in putting together a Ruby library for interfacing with
Alpha that would abstract the work of creating a request and parsing the
response, making integration a snap for other developers and enabling deeper
integration with Alpha around the web. I've thought a bit about how that might
look, too:_

    
    
      query = WolframAlpha::Query.new(:query => '7.5 parsecs in light years')
      response = query.execute
    
      response.pods.keys.map(&:title)
      => ['Input Interpretation', 'Result', 'Additional Conversions', 'Comparison as distance', 'Interpretations,' 'Corresponding Quantity']
    
      response.pods['Result']
      => '24.5 light years'
    

_But with such a strong financial disincentive to develop for the platform,
it's not likely that I'll register as a developer to create something like
this. Feel free to contact me if terms change._

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cldwalker
They have temporary free plans called Pioneer Grants but you have to "discuss
your application" with a representative. Oh silly wolfram, wasn't it enough to
see microsoft learn a lesson the hard way from google?

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sekizaru
I was looking forward to using the API in my Firefox add-on that shows the
Wolfram Alpha results next to the Google results. Quick calculation of the
cost: 18,000 users/day * say 3 searches/day = ~$2,300/day. I think I'll stick
with loading it in an iframe. I would have thought that this kind of thing fit
perfectly with the example use case "augmenting web and meta-web search with
computed knowledge" but I guess they have a different target market.

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davidalln
On the other hand, it's much cheaper than Mathematica!

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catch23
Their home edition is $300, but unlimited requests. Their API version is the
equivalent of 5000 total requests over 5 months, or 4000 requests in 1 month
($240 for 3000 overage requests)

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rw
Wolfram|Alpha uses _algorithmic computation_! Sign me up!

"Wolfram|Alpha uses a unique paradigm for modeling data, based on algorithmic
computation, that allows for implicit relationships among the data and the
emergence of new knowledge."

<http://products.wolframalpha.com/api/faqs.html> ("Comparisons")

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nash
I was going to ask is does this mean the wolframalfail own all your source
code?

But I'm thinking the 6/c a query thing means it's all moot.

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uninverted
This is a paragon of obfuscatory buzz-speak.

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joubert
I guess I'll stick to Yahoo! Pipes.

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krav
When academics launch a company, what do you expect?

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mahmud
Wolfram is _industry_ , not Academia. They're used to billing sectors like
aeronautics and oil for gazzilions. To them "web startups" are nobodies, and
the price is there to keep the vagrants at bay.

