Simple, transparent pricing

Yes. The free tier includes 500 validations per month, up to 2 API keys, and a burst limit of 20 requests per minute, with no credit card required. It uses the same API, the same response format, the same caching, and the same 32-country registry coverage as paid plans, so nothing about your integration changes when you upgrade. Test mode is included too: requests made with an avat_test_ key never reach the registries and never consume quota, so integration tests are effectively free and unmetered. VAT rate lookups via /v1/rates are also free and unlimited on every tier and do not count against the 500. When you need more volume, Pro offers 10,000 validations per month with 10 keys for EUR 39 per month (EUR 29 per month billed annually), and Business offers 50,000 per month with 100 keys for EUR 129 per month (EUR 99 per month billed annually).

Use a test-mode API key (prefixed avat_test_) and every request runs in test mode: nothing reaches VIES, HMRC, BFS, Bronnoysund, or ABR, nothing counts against your monthly quota, and every response carries meta.mode: "test" so you can tell environments apart. Magic VAT numbers trigger predictable scenarios: DE111111111 returns a valid company, DE000000000 returns valid: false, DE999999999 simulates a 503 upstream error, DE777777777 simulates a 429 rate limit response, and DE555555555 simulates the stale cache fallback. Magic numbers also exist for the UK, France, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and Norway. Any other correctly formatted number returns a generic valid result, while malformed input still returns invalid_vat_format exactly as in live mode, so your error handling gets exercised too. The result is fast, deterministic integration tests with no flaky upstream dependencies. One exception: async endpoints require a live key. See the docs for the full list of magic numbers.

Yes. GET /v1/rates returns current rates for all 32 supported countries in a single response: the standard rate plus reduced, super-reduced, and zero rates where a country has them, together with the country name, currency, and a per-country updated_at timestamp. GET /v1/rates/NL (or any supported country code) returns one country. Rates endpoints are free and unlimited on every tier, including Free, and never count against your monthly validation quota; only the standard per-minute burst limit applies. That makes them practical for high-frequency use, such as computing checkout prices on the fly or refreshing a pricing table on a daily schedule. Responses use the same { data, meta } envelope as validation responses, so your existing client code and error handling carry over unchanged. Deciding which rate applies to a specific product category remains your tax logic; the API reports the official current rates per country.

Yes. The /v1/validate/batch endpoint accepts up to 50 VAT/GST numbers in a single request and is available on Pro and Business plans. Each number is validated independently against the appropriate registry (VIES, HMRC, BFS, Bronnoysund, or ABR), and results come back in the same order as the input array. The response is always HTTP 200: individual failures such as an upstream timeout or an invalid format appear inline as per-item error objects instead of failing the whole request, so one bad number never costs you the other 49 results. Per-item meta shows cache state, since one item may be a fresh lookup while another comes from the cache. Duplicates in the input are deduplicated: only unique numbers are validated and counted against your monthly quota, while the response still returns one result per input item. Pass a genuine requester_vat_number once to request consultation numbers for supported EU items; retain them only when returned. Requester batches disable cache reads and national register fallback by default, with explicit cache=true or fallback=true opting back into the corresponding path. For larger batches, use async batch validation.