Pricing model

Cost of tasking

The parameters that you submit at the time of creating a new task affect the tasking cost, because some of the available options are charged differently under the ICEYE pricing model. The rationale for this pricing model is explained in detail in this article.

Contracts and pricing

Your contract with ICEYE plays a vital role in the pricing model. There are two kinds of contract provided by ICEYE:

Contract with a pricing plan: The pricing schedule is defined in a pricing plan, which is accessible to the API Platform and enables you to access information about pricing and budget using operations, such as getTaskPrice and getSummary.
Contract without a pricing plan: The pricing schedule is handled by a subsystem not directly accessible to the API Platform. Consequently, getTaskPrice and getSummary operations are unavailable.

Each contract has an immutable pricing model that is agreed upon at the time of entering a definitive commercial agreement. Different contracts may have different pricing models, and two identical tasks may have different prices under different contracts. Moreover, certain tasking options are only available if they are enabled in the corresponding contract.

For more details, see Role of contracts in the API.

Single tasks

The following parameters affect the cost of tasking a single image:

Parameter	Price impact
Region	The price of tasking images from different regions of the world is related to the level of regional demand.
Task priority	The price of tasking at different priority levels is reflected in the terms of the contract.
Imaging mode	The price of each imaging mode reflects the amount of satellite resources needed to acquire the image data.
Time to availability (SLA)	The price of tasking on different SLA terms — affecting the time to availability for standard product data — is reflected in the terms of the contract.
Exclusivity	Determines whether the end product of your tasking is made available only in your private catalog (for an agreed time period) or also gets transferred to the ICEYE public catalog (this option is also constrained by the terms of your contract).
EULA	The end-user license agreement (EULA) determines who is licensed to access the image data.

Parameter

Price impact

Region

The price of tasking images from different regions of the world is related to the level of regional demand.

Task priority

The price of tasking at different priority levels is reflected in the terms of the contract.

Imaging mode

The price of each imaging mode reflects the amount of satellite resources needed to acquire the image data.

Time to availability (SLA)

The price of tasking on different SLA terms — affecting the time to availability for standard product data — is reflected in the terms of the contract.

Exclusivity

Determines whether the end product of your tasking is made available only in your private catalog (for an agreed time period) or also gets transferred to the ICEYE public catalog (this option is also constrained by the terms of your contract).

EULA

The end-user license agreement (EULA) determines who is licensed to access the image data.

Region

There is a large variation in demand for images from different regions of the world and this has an influence on task pricing. Based on historical data, ICEYE estimates the demand for images from different regions and adjusts the pricing model accordingly. These regional prices are defined at the start of the contract and remain unchanged throughout the contract lifetime.

ICEYE’s region-based pricing model helps to manage the demand for images from heavily subscribed regions, reducing the probability of tasking conflicts.

Task priority

The task priority specifies the priority level that applies when the scheduler has to resolve a potential conflict. In the case of a conflict, a COMMERCIAL task will always take priority over a BACKGROUND task.

Task priority can take one of the following string values:

Priority Description

Priority	Description
`BACKGROUND`	The task will be scheduled if there are no conflicts, but will be removed from the schedule if a higher priority task is created in the same time window.
`COMMERCIAL`	The task has a higher priority than `BACKGROUND` (90% probability of task fulfillment). See also Accuracy of imaging time.

BACKGROUND

The task will be scheduled if there are no conflicts, but will be removed from the schedule if a higher priority task is created in the same time window.

COMMERCIAL

The task has a higher priority than BACKGROUND (90% probability of task fulfillment). See also Accuracy of imaging time.

Defaults to the contractually agreed priority from your contract.

The price of tasking at different priority levels is reflected in the terms of the contract.

If you have tasking requirements that are more demanding than commercial priority, please contact our Customer Operations and Satellite Planning (COSP) team.

Imaging mode

The imaging mode (for example, Strip, Spot, Spot Extended Area, and so on) defines how a satellite collects imaging data. Because the imaging mode affects the length of time a satellite spends acquiring an image, the number of looks, and the amount of image data that is acquired, this has a direct impact on the cost of acquiring the image.

The price of each imaging mode reflects the amount of satellite resources needed to acquire the image data.

Service level agreement (SLA)

The service level agreement (SLA) specifies a guaranteed availability time for tasked image products. The availability time is the time elapsed between the moment a satellite finishes acquiring the raw image, and the time when the image products become available for download from ICEYE.

Availability time does not include the time required to download the product data or deliver the data to an external location.

The sla parameter can take one of the following string values:

SLA Description

SLA	Description
`SLA_8H`	Promises availability of standard image products within 8 hours of the satellite acquiring the image (normal delivery priority).
`SLA_3H`	(COMING SOON) Promises availability of standard image products within 3 hours of the satellite acquiring the image.

SLA_8H

Promises availability of standard image products within 8 hours of the satellite acquiring the image (normal delivery priority).

SLA_3H

(COMING SOON) Promises availability of standard image products within 3 hours of the satellite acquiring the image.

Defaults to SLA_8H.

The price of tasking on different SLA terms is reflected in the terms of the contract.

Exclusivity

By default, tasked image data is stored with PRIVATE exclusivity, which means that the image products remain private for the time period agreed in your contract with ICEYE. After the agreed time period has elapsed, the image products can be transferred (anonymously) to the ICEYE public catalog.

If you select the PUBLIC option when creating a task, the image data will be transferred (anonymously) to the ICEYE catalog after 7 days, where it becomes available for purchase by other customers.

This option is also constrained by the terms of your contract.

EULA

The end user license agreement (EULA) defines the terms of use for purchased SAR products, also defining how widely products can be distributed. For full details of the EULA, see the relevant terms of your contract.

The eula parameter can take one of the following string values:

EULA Description

EULA	Description
`GOVERNMENT`	This EULA option should be selected by a governmental organization that has contracted directly with ICEYE or by a reseller that plans to share products with a governmental organization. Government End Users shall use Products, Derivatives and Documentation solely under Government EULA.
`STANDARD`	This EULA option should be selected by a commercial organization that has contracted directly with ICEYE or by a reseller that plans to share products with a commercial organization. All other End Users than Government End Users shall use Products, Derivatives and Documentation solely under Standard EULA.

GOVERNMENT

This EULA option should be selected by a governmental organization that has contracted directly with ICEYE or by a reseller that plans to share products with a governmental organization. Government End Users shall use Products, Derivatives and Documentation solely under Government EULA.

STANDARD

This EULA option should be selected by a commercial organization that has contracted directly with ICEYE or by a reseller that plans to share products with a commercial organization. All other End Users than Government End Users shall use Products, Derivatives and Documentation solely under Standard EULA.

The price of tasking on different EULA terms is reflected in the terms of the contract.

Cancellation policy

If you decide to cancel a task after it has been created and accepted by the tasking API (for example, after invoking the createTask operation and the task status has transitioned to ACTIVE), you could be liable for a cancellation charge.

The cancellation charge depends on how close the cancellation request time is to the planned acquisition window:

Cancellation request time	Cancellation charge
More than 72h prior to the start of the acquisition time window	None
72 - 48h prior to the start of the acquisition time window	10% of the order value
48 - 24h prior to the start of the acquisition time window	20% of the order value
Less than 24h prior to the start of the acquisition time window	100% of the order value (no refund)

Cancellation request time

Cancellation charge

More than 72h prior to the start of the acquisition time window

None

72 - 48h prior to the start of the acquisition time window

10% of the order value

48 - 24h prior to the start of the acquisition time window

20% of the order value

Less than 24h prior to the start of the acquisition time window

100% of the order value (no refund)

Cancellation within 1 hour of task submission (creation) is free of charge (grace period).

After the start of the acquisition time window, it is not possible to cancel the task and the order must be fully paid.

Managing imaging costs with the API

API operations for budgeting and pricing

The ICEYE APIs provide operations that help you to manage imaging costs:

Check contract balance — by invoking the getSummary operation for a particular contract ID, you can check the amount of money already spent and the maximum amount that can be spent for that contract.
Get a price quotation for a single collection task — by invoking the getTaskPrice operation with the parameters for a proposed task, you can get a price quotation to find out what the task would cost.

These API operations are available only for contracts associated with a pricing plan.

Currency units

Currency amounts are typically expressed in terms of a major currency unit and minor currency unit. For example, in the case of the USD (United States Dollar), amounts are specified in dollars (major currency unit) and cents (minor currency unit). The ICEYE API specifies currency amounts using only the minor currency unit. This makes it possible to specify currency amounts in the form of a single unsigned integer.

The following table shows some examples of currency amounts expressed in minor currency units:

Currency	Amount	Amount in minor currency unit	JSON representation
USD	1385.25	138525	`{"amount": 138525, "currency": "USD"}`
EUR	2535.67	253567	`{"amount": 253567, "currency": "EUR"}`

When parsing the JSON represenation, we recommend that you deserialize the amount field to a 64-bit unsigned integer for optimum compatibility (by default, JSON treats all numbers as IEEE754 double)