Free tiers and the quota guard

Paid outreach tools charge for every search, lookup and email. Larvabot plugs into free tiers you sign up for yourself instead, and puts a guard around each one so you never cross a free limit by accident.

#Bring your own keys

You create your own accounts with services like Gemini, Tavily and Brevo, then paste the keys into Settings. That means:

• the free allowance is yours, not shared with other Larvabot users
• you can see your own usage in each provider's dashboard
• you can revoke a key any time, and Larvabot simply moves on to the next provider

Keys are encrypted before they're stored. How keys are protected.

#Chains with fallbacks

Each job has a list of providers it can use, tried in order. A provider is skipped when it isn't set up, has used its free quota or returns an error (busy, rate-limited, down). The next one takes over, and the run carries on.

The order is chosen to make free quotas last:

1. Monthly quotas first. Tavily, Linkup, Exa and Brave renew every month, so they're used before anything else.
2. Search servers next. Your own SearXNG server, if you run one, has no quota at all. After it comes Larvabot's shared search server, which every account can use for 1,500 searches a month with no key.
3. One-time credits last. Serper's credits never renew, so they're saved for when everything else is spent.
4. Keyless as a last resort. DuckDuckGo needs no key but rate-limits quickly.

See every chain in order on the tools overview.

#Hard caps below every free limit

Every metered provider has a hard cap set just under its free allowance. Tavily gives 1,000 searches a month, so Larvabot stops at 950. Hunter gives 50, so it stops at 45. The counts reset with the provider's own period (monthly, or never for one-time credits).

You can see and change the caps in Settings → Free-quota guard. Set a cap to 0 to switch a service off completely without deleting its key.

#Checking what the provider says

Counting its own calls isn't enough: you might use the same key somewhere else. So for providers that report their remaining balance (Tavily, Serper, Hunter and Prospeo), Larvabot asks regularly and stops with a small margin left, whatever its own count says. The Provider reports column in the quota table shows the latest answer.

#Pacing, so quotas last all month

The hourly schedule is spaced out on purpose: about 6 lead searches, at most 12 community checks and 2 directory searches a day. That's around 400 searches a month, comfortably inside Tavily's free tier alone, before any other provider is touched.

#What if every provider is out?

Then the job waits. The run is logged on the Jobs & providers page with a note like "no search provider available", and it picks up again when a quota resets or you add another key. Nothing is ever charged to get around a limit.