4Chan Plans Pricing
The 4chan Read-Only JSON API is provided free of charge with no commercial tiers, API keys, or paid quotas. All access is anonymous and subject only to the published rate limits (see rate-limits/) and the 4chan API Terms of Service. The only money-flowing surface 4chan operates is the consumer-facing "4chan Pass" (a site-wide CAPTCHA bypass for posters on boards.4chan.org), which is not part of the JSON API surface and is therefore documented here for completeness only.
4Chan Plans Pricing is the machine-readable pricing-plan profile for 4chan on the APIs.io network, conforming to the API Commons Plans specification.
It defines 2 plans, covering freemium and subscription tiers, with named plans including Read-Only JSON API — Free, 4chan Pass (consumer, not API).
Tagged areas include Social, Imageboard, Read Only, and Free.
Plans
The default and only access mode for the 4chan Read-Only JSON API. Free, anonymous, no signup, no API key, subject to the 1 request/sec and 10 seconds-per-thread polling floor.
- All 6 read-only endpoints (boards, threadlist, catalog, archive, index pages, threads)
- HTTP and HTTPS support
- CORS allowed from boards.4chan.org and boards.4channel.org
- No authentication required
- If-Modified-Since caching supported
Consumer-facing site pass that bypasses CAPTCHA on boards.4chan.org for human posters. Not part of the JSON API surface — included for context only. Pricing per the 4chan Pass page.
- CAPTCHA bypass on posting (web site only, not API)
- No effect on the read-only JSON API access surface