Understanding Processing Units (PUs)
Processing Units (PUs) are a standard metric used to measure computational resource consumption on Planet Insights Platform. They allow you to scale your Earth observation (EO) data analysis, streaming, and access workflows reliably, ensuring you only pay for the cloud computing resources you consume.
Types of Processing Units
There are two categories of PUs to align with different usage patterns:
| PU Type | Description | Key Feature |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly PUs | These units are included in your standard organizational plan (for example, Enterprise Small/Large). | Reset Monthly. Unused PUs and requests do not roll over to the next month. |
| Top-up PUs | These are one-time, non-recurring units purchased to handle spikes in usage or large, non-recurring projects. | One-Time Purchase. Ideal for large, historical data analysis or high-volume, single-event projects. |
Monitoring Your Usage and Consumption
Monitoring your PU usage is essential for cost management and workflow optimization. There are multiple ways to track consumption, both visually through the user interface and programmatically via API responses.
The Usage Dashboard and Reporting
The Usage tab within the Account Manager provides a comprehensive, visual overview of your PU consumption.
- Processing Units Usage Bar: Visually tracks your monthly consumption against your allocated limit, showing the percentage of quota used and the number of days remaining until the monthly usage resets.
- Detailed Breakdown: Shows the specific numbers for: Total PUs used, PUs remaining, and the number of recurring PUs allocated for the next month.
- Quota Alerts: You will see color-coded quota alerts to notify you when you are nearing your limits.
- Proactive Notifications: You will receive both in-platform notifications within Planet Insight and email notifications when your consumption reaches the following milestones:
- 50% of your quota.
- 90% of your quota.
- 100% (Quota exhausted).
- Top-Ups: You will see quick access to purchase additional top-up PUs if you purchased your platform access via the purchase flow in our self-service purchasing app.
Reporting: Beneath the quota bars, you can download pre-generated daily or monthly reports, available in detailed or summary formats.
Monthly reports will only be generated after the month has ended.
The features described above apply to customer accounts that have been migrated to the new Account Manager application (insights.planet.com/account). If your account has not yet been migrated, you will be directed to the existing Account App with no immediate changes.
Statistics
In the statistics tab, you can visualize usage trends over time and identify which APIs consume the most resources. You can filter the data by time period and see detailed consumption views filtered per API.
API Response Header
For programmatic, request-by-request tracking, inspect the response headers of any successful API request (response code 2XX):
- Header Name:
x-processunits - Value: This returns the exact number of PUs consumed by that specific request.
Consumption Rules: The Two Main Workflows
PU consumption is categorized based on the type of API request you are making. Costs depend on whether you are focusing on data access and delivery, such as viewing tiles and ordering data, or data processing tasks like spectral analysis, zonal statistics, and streaming
Data Access and Delivery
The information in this section applies only to self-service customers. For more information, visit the Planet Enables Self-Service Purchasing for Small Customers on Planet Insights Platform blog post on Processing Units.
These rules primarily apply to data ordering, management via
Orders API, Subscriptions API, Data API
| Action/Service | PU Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Image Asset Activation | 20 PUs per asset requested. | If one image covers multiple AOIs, it's activated only once within a 24-hour window. |
| Clip Tool | 1 PU per data asset. | Used to clip the data to a specific area of interest. |
| Merge Tool | 10 PUs per request. | Used to combine multiple assets. |
| Coregister Tool | 18 PUs per request. | Used for spatial alignment. |
| Other Tools | 2 PUs per tool, per data asset. | Applies to Band Math, Composite, Harmonization, Reproject, Tile, TOAR. |
Tiles API
This includes the WMTS and XYZ tile services for both Planet Basemaps and PlanetScope Scene Tiles.
| Unit | Plan | Consumed PUs |
|---|---|---|
| 1 Basemap Tile | Tropical Forest Observatory | 1 |
Basemaps API
-
Subscriptions API
- Planet commissioned Basemaps (For example Tropical Forest Observatory ) - no PU consumption
-
Orders API, Basemaps API
- Ordering and downloading basemap quads consumes processing units depending on the type and cadence of the basemap as outlined in the below table:
| Cadence | Type | PU consumption for one quad download |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly | Visual | 1500 |
| Monthly | Surface Reflectance | 3000 |
Data Transfer (Egress) Costs
Each GB egressed off the platform (For example, downloaded or delivered to your cloud) costs 200 PUs. Delivery to image collections on Planet Insights Platform does not consume PUs.
| Action/Service | PU Cost |
|---|---|
| Cloud Delivery | 200 PUs per GB |
| Delivery to Data Collections | 0 PUs |
Example Calculations
PlanetScope Area Under Management Data Ordering
The following example illustrates the processing unit calculation for the PlanetScope Area Under Management data ordering service. In this scenario, we subscribe to data for ten fields, totaling 1 sq km or 100 hectares, using an 8-band atmospherically corrected surface reflectance product harmonized to Sentinel-2.
PlanetScope Area Under Management Data Ordering Example
The red polygons indicate ten selected fields for which data is being requested. The overlaid blue rectangles show the data subscription zones covering these fields.
| Parameter | PU per parameter | Quantity | PU consumed over one year | Details |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Assets | 20 PU | 2 * 292 The calculation is based on an adjusted annual cycle:
| 11680 | Fields are scattered across the area covered with two assets. One year of data, with approximately 20% of imagery not available due to weather, resulting in 292 observations. |
| Tools: clip | 1 PU | 10 * 292 | 2920 | |
| Tools: harmonize | 2 PU | 10 * 292 | 5840 | |
| Egress | 200 PU/GB | 0.46 GB | 92 | Data amounts to approximately 0.0016 GB per sq km. |
| Total | 20531 PU per year |
Processing Units Quota Enforcement
The information in this section applies only to self-service customers. For more information, visit the Planet Enables Self-Service Purchasing for Small Customers on Planet Insights Platform blog post on Processing Units.
If you are on a plan that utilizes Processing Units (PUs) for compute resource consumption (such as the Tropical Forest Observation Program or PlanetScope Area Under Management Platform & Export) and have exhausted your PU quota, the following restrictions apply:
- Order Creation: New orders submitted via the API will be rejected with a 403 Forbidden response.
- Tile Streaming: Tile streaming requests will return watermarked tiles.
- Subscriptions:
- All active subscriptions will be moved to a Suspended state and delivery will pause.
- New subscription creation requests will be rejected with a 403 Forbidden response.
Once your PU balance is restored, you can manually reactivate your subscriptions. For detailed steps, see the Subscriptions Suspension Documentation.
To restore full access and resume ordering, you must increase your PU balance. You can do this by:
- Purchasing top-up units: Available via the Usage page in Account Manager application.
- Upgrading your plan: Visit the Purchase page in the Account Manager.
- Waiting for reset: Monthly PU allocations reset on the first day of each month.
Once your PU balance is restored, you can manually reactivate your subscriptions. For detailed steps, see the Subscriptions Suspension Documentation.
Data Processing
Costs marked with ** are not yet applied, they will come into effect in the future.
Processing API, OGC API, Statistical API
Each request costs a proportional amount of processing unit(s), depending on what data and processing is requested. One processing unit (PU) is defined as a request for:
- an output (image) size of 512 x 512 pixels
- 3 collection input bands
- one data
sampleper pixel (see sample) - an output (image) format not exceeding 16 bits per pixel
- without additional processing (For example, orthorectification) applied
In addition:
-
Minimal cost of a request is:
- 0.005 PU for the Processing API and OGC API.
- 0.01 PU for the Statistical API.
-
The number of remaining processing units is reduced only when a request successfully executes. For example, when the response code is
2XX.
Multiplication factors are used to calculate how many processing units are required for each request. The definition of 1 processing unit and the calculation rules are summarized in the following tables:
| Parameter | Quantity for 1 PU | Rules for multiplication factors |
|---|---|---|
| Area of interest | 512 x 512 px | The multiplication factor is calculated by dividing requested input size (BBOX) by 512 x 512 (pixel size depends on the user-defined resolution of the request execution). The minimum value of this multiplication factor is 0.01. This corresponds to an area of 0.25 sq km for Sentinel-2 data at 10 m spatial resolution. |
| Number of input bands | 3 | The multiplication factor is calculated by dividing the requested number of input bands by 3. An exception is requesting dataMask which is not counted, unless it is the only band included. |
| Output format | 8 bit or 16 bit TIFF/JPG/PNG | Requesting 32 bit float TIFF results in a multiplication factor of 2 due to larger memory consumption and data traffic. Requesting application/octet-stream results in a multiplication factor of 1.4 due to additional integration costs (This is used for integration with external tools such as xcube.). |
| Number of data samples | 1 | The multiplication factor equals the number of data samples per pixel. |
| Data fusion | N/A | The multiplication is only applied when data fusion is used. Multiplication factor is calculated as a sum of all collections within the same endpoint location and twice the sum of all remote collections. For example, count(local_collections) + 2x count(remote_collections).Example: data fusion request executed on services.sentinel-hub.com endpoint, which includes Sentinel-2 L1C, Sentinel-2 L2A and Landsat-9 would have a multiplication factor of 4 (1 + 1 + 2). |
Surcharges
Surcharges are used for non-standard requests, which impact on the execution costs.
| Surcharge | Rules for calculation |
|---|---|
| ** Evalscript execution time | Execution of evalscript with duration shorter than 200 ms, is covered within the base request. Execution of complex evalscripts (For example, neural networks, large decision trees, etc.) with duration longer than 200ms there is a surcharge of 0.5 PU per each additional started 100 ms interval. |
Sentinel-1 data processing
In addition to general data processing rules defined above, the following optional multiplicators apply as well:
| Parameter | Rules for multiplication factors |
|---|---|
| Orthorectification | Requesting orthorectification will result in a multiplication factor of 2 due to additional processing requirements. |
| Radiometric Terrain Correction | Requesting radiometric terrain correction will result in a multiplication factor of 2.5 due to additional processing requirements. The orthorectification factor is not additionally applied as it is a prerequisite. |
| Speckle Filtering | Requesting speckle filtering will result in a multiplication factor of 2 due to additional processing requirements. |
Catalog API, OGC WFS
Each request costs a proportional amount of processing unit(s) depending on what data and processing is requested. One processing unit (PU) is defined as a request for:
- area of 1000 x 1000 km
- time period up to one month
In addition:
- Minimal cost of a request is 0.01 PU.
- Maximal cost of a request is 1 PU.
- The number of remaining processing units is reduced only when a request successfully executes. For example, when the response code is 2XX.
| Parameter | Quantity for 1 PU | Rules for multiplication factors |
|---|---|---|
| Area of interest | 1 000 000 sq km | The multiplication factor is calculated by dividing requested input area of interest (BBOX) by 1 000 000. The minimum value of this multiplication factor is 0.01. This corresponds to an area of 10 000 sq km |
| Time period | 1 month | The multiplication factor is calculated by ceiling requested time period in months. |
Batch Processing API
"General data processing" and "Sentinel-1 data processing" rules apply with the following exceptions:
- Minimal cost of a request is 100 PU.
- Processing with batch processing API will result in a multiplication factor of 1/3 (only applies if processed tiles are bigger than 10.000 px). Thus, three times more data can be processed comparing to Processing API for the same amount of PUs.
- ** When data is delivered to a bucket in other region within the same system (For example, Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem, AWS) there is additional cost of 0.03 PU per MB of transferred data.
Asynchronous Processing API
"General data processing" and "Sentinel-1 data processing" rules apply with the following exceptions:
- Minimal cost of a request is 10 PU.
- When using Asynchronous Processing API, a multiplication factor of 2/3 will be applied to all requests with an area of at least 10,000 px. Thus, up to 1.5 times more data can be processed compared to the Processing API for the same amount of PUs. If the request defines an area smaller than 10,000 px, this request will be charged at the regular rate (no multiplication factor).
- When data is delivered to a bucket in other region within the same system (For example, Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem, AWS) there is an additional cost of 0.03 PU per MB of data.
Batch Statistical API
"General data processing" and "Sentinel-1 data processing" rules apply with the following exceptions:
- Minimal cost of a request is 100 PU.
- ** When data is delivered to a bucket in other region within the same system (For example, Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem, AWS) there is an additional cost of 0.03 PU per MB of data.
Bring Your Own COG API and Zarr API
- Each non-GET request to BYOC or Zarr API costs 1 PU.
- Usage of your BYOC and Zarr collections is billed the same as usage of public collections for other data process APIs.
Data Processing Examples
PlanetScope Vegetation Indices Statistics
An example calculation of processing units for calculating vegeation index statistics with PlanetScope for agriculture fields.
| Parameter | Quantity | Multiplication factor | Details |
|---|---|---|---|
| Output size (width x height) | 424 x 424 px | x ~0.68 | The output size for 3 meter spatial resolution is 424 x 424 px for 400 acres, which is ~68% of the area of a 512 x 512 px image. |
| Number of input bands | 5 | x 5/3 | 5 spectral bands are used to calculate several indices in one evalscript: Red, Near Infrared, Green, Red Edge, and Yellow |
| Number of data samples | 365 days * 2 years | x 730 | Estimate of 1 image per day for PlanetScope, though some days might be missing, it will provide an upper bound. |
| Total | 827.33 processing units | To calculate the number of processing units for this request multiply all the individual multiplication factors: 730 x 5/3 x 0.68 = 827.33 |
Sentinel-1 Change Detection
An example of calculation of processing units for a Sentinel-1 change detection request (for example, comparison of two time slices) is presented in the table below.
| Parameter | Quantity | Multiplication factor | Details |
|---|---|---|---|
| Output size (width x height) | 1024 x 1024 px | x 4 | The requested output size is 1024 x 1024 px which is 4 times larger than the output size for one PU (512 x 512 px). Hence the multiplication factor is 4. |
| Number of input bands | 4 | x 4/3 | 4 input bands are requested, which is 4/3 times more than 3 input bands, which are included in one PU. The multiplication factor is thus 4/3. |
| Output format | 32-bit float | x 2 | The requested 32 bit float TIFF has a multiplication factor of 2. |
| Number of data samples | 2 | x 2 | 2 data samples (one for each time slice) were requested for each pixel. Thus the multiplication factor is 2. |
| Orthorectification | Yes | x 2 | Ortorectification is requested, which results in a multiplication factor of 2. |
| Total | 42.667 processing units | To calculate the number of processing units for this request multiply all the individual multiplication factors: 4 x 4/3 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 42.667 |
Statistical API is also a multi-temporal request. The same rules for calculating multiplication factors apply.
NDVI Calculation for a Parcel with Sentinel-2
An example of calculation of processing units of NDVI value over a 4 hectare large parcel at 10 m spatial resolution is presented in the table below.
| Parameter | Quantity | Multiplication factor | Details |
|---|---|---|---|
| Output size (width x height) | 20 x 20 px | x 0.01 | The requested output size is 20 x 20 px which is smaller than the minimum area, thus the multiplication factor is 0.01. |
| Number of input bands | 2 | x 2/3 | 2 input bands are requested, thus the multiplication factor is 2/3. |
| Output format | 16-bit tiff | x 1 | The same as in the definition of one processing unit, thus the multiplication factor is 1. |
| Number of data samples | 1 | x 1 | The same as in the definition of one processing unit, thus the multiplication factor is 1. |
| Orthorectification | No | x 1 | The same as in the definition of one processing unit, thus the multiplication factor is 1. |
| Total | 0.0067 processing units | To calculate the number of processing units for this request multiply all the individual multiplication factors: 0.01 x 2/3 x 1 x 1 = 0.0067 |