SPUs provide a consistent way to measure how platform resources are used when accessing data, running analytics, or making requests. Instead of tracking compute, storage, and processing separately, these resources are combined into a single predictable unit.
SPUs may be consumed when:
Accessing platform data products
Running analytics or processing workflows
Retrieving orbital or contextual data
Making API requests
Performing advanced queries or calculations
This unified model helps ensure transparent and predictable usage across all Slingshot tools.
Where Can I View My SPU Balance?
You can view your current SPU balance directly from the Portal Main dashboard.
The Credits Remaining card shows:
Your current SPU balance
The total SPUs included in your plan
This provides a quick overview of your available usage across the platform.
Why Do Some Operations Use More SPUs?
Different platform operations require different levels of computation.
For example:
Contextual lookups (such as spacecraft metadata) require minimal processing and consume fewer SPUs.
Orbital calculations, such as generating ephemerides or retrieving TLE histories, require more computational resources and therefore consume more SPUs.
Operations that involve complex calculations, large datasets, or time-series processing typically use more SPUs.
How Does TLE Time Span Pricing Work?
When retrieving historical TLE data using the time span endpoint, SPU usage is based on the number of TLE records returned.
The cost is:
100 SPU per TLE included in the response
For example:
A request covering 30 days may return approximately 90 TLE records
This would result in a total cost of about 9,000 SPU for that request
The total SPU usage depends on the number of records included in the response.
Are Failed Requests Charged?
No.
SPUs are only consumed when a request returns a successful response (2xx status code).
The following responses do not consume SPUs:
Client errors (4xx)
Server errors (5xx)
Rate-limit responses (429)
How Do Rate Limits Work With SPUs?
Rate limits and SPU balances are enforced independently.
This means:
You may have available SPUs but still reach a rate limit
You may stay within rate limits but fail if your SPU balance is exhausted
Both limits must be respected when using platform services.
Does Pagination Affect SPU Usage?
Yes.
Each paginated request is billed at the listed SPU rate per request.
Using larger page sizes can reduce the total number of requests required to retrieve a dataset, which may lower overall SPU usage.
Where Can I Monitor Detailed SPU Usage?
For more detailed insights, you can view SPU consumption in the Developer Portal.
Navigate to Key Management to monitor:
Total SPUs consumed
Endpoint-level usage patterns
Remaining SPU balance
This helps you understand how different tools and workflows are using platform resources.