Cost, plus two dollars.

You pay what the research cost to run, rounded up to the next cent, plus a flat $2.00. Nothing else. A guide that fails costs nothing.

The rule

Four sentences.

Your agent authorizes a maximum before any research starts. Nothing runs until that hold is recorded.
A successful guide charges the measured provider cost, rounded up to the next USD cent, plus exactly $2.00.
A failed or cancelled guide charges $0, and the authorization is released or refunded in full.
The charge never exceeds the maximum your agent approved. If the true cost lands above it, we absorb the difference and do not ask for a second payment.

Worked example

How the rounding falls.

These numbers illustrate the arithmetic. They are not a quoted price; what a guide costs depends on how much research the subject takes.

Line	Amount
Measured provider cost	$1.8342
Rounded up to the next cent	$1.84
Service fee	$2.00
Total charged	$3.84

Providers meter below the cent. Card networks do not. The fraction of a cent created by that rounding is printed on the receipt rather than kept quietly.

Receipt

Itemized, not summarized.

A completed get_guide returns the markdown and a receipt carrying each of these:

Field	What it is
providerCostUsdMicros	Measured provider spend for the run, in USD micros.
serviceFeeUsdMicros	Always 2,000,000 — exactly $2.00.
roundingUsdMicros	The sub-cent remainder created by rounding up.
merchantLossUsdMicros	Present when the authorized maximum capped the charge.
totalChargedUsdMicros	What was actually captured.
pricingVersion	The cost model the run was priced under.

Units

Micros in, cents out.

Provider cost is metered in USD micros — millionths of a dollar. Charges settle in USD, in whole cents, through Stripe. maxTotalChargeUsdMicros is therefore a whole number of cents expressed in micros: a positive multiple of 10,000.

What there is not

No plan to choose.

There is no subscription, no seat, no minimum commitment, no prepaid credit, and no leftover balance to spend down. There is one hold per job, and it settles or it releases. Status reads are free.