Open and Accurate Air Quality Monitors
We design professional, accurate and long-lasting air quality monitors that are open-source and open-hardware so that you have full control on how you want to use the monitor.
Learn Moreby Achim Haug on January 15, 2025
For the past few years, we’ve been driven by a simple goal: to put the power of accurate air quality data into the hands of as many people as possible. That’s why we’ve been so proud to offer the AirGradient dashboard completely free of charge. Many of you even received a year or two of included access when you purchased your monitor, and even after that initial period, we haven’t actually switched on any charges.
We genuinely believe in providing this valuable resource without barriers, and we made it work for a while. However, as our community has grown, the sheer volume of data being processed has meant our server infrastructure costs have really started to climb. And without any recurring fees to cover this, it isn’t sustainable for the long haul.
If you’ve been using your AirGradient device a lot over the past few months, you will have noticed that we’ve had multiple server crashes and significant downtime. This is just one example of an area that we need to improve in, but that will substantially increase our costs.
Now, I know what some of you might be thinking: “Oh great, another subscription.” Believe me, I understand that feeling. As someone who uses online services myself, I’m really not keen on subscriptions! That’s precisely why we’ve spent so much time wrestling with this and trying to find a way to make it as fair and beneficial as possible for you.
You’ll find our subscription cost will be just USD 2 per month for each monitor connected to the dashboard – a price point we’ve carefully considered to be considerably less than other similar offerings in the market.
You will not be automatically charged for a subscription. The free plan is the default (after the one or two years included in the monitor purchase elapsed), and you can decide for yourself if you want to upgrade to access the additional features of the paid plan.
This contribution helps us cover the increasing costs essential to providing a reliable and powerful dashboard experience. Primarily, this addresses the ever-growing demand for database space required to store and process air quality data and continuously adding new and powerful features to the dashboard.
We want to make it clear that we believe in making this subscription as fair as possible. As such, we are only charging for more demanding features that directly impact our server load and developer costs. For example, holding months of historical data or setting up many alarms are very taxing on our infrastructure and, therefore, will be included as part of the subscription. We will continue to ensure that basic functionality remains free or accessible to everyone. However, we do feel like a subscription is necessary to cover increasing costs, including our developers who are constantly working on maintaining the platform and adding new features.
Even with the introduction of subscriptions, the free plan will continue to offer valuable functionality, including the ability to view your current real-time air quality data and easily export your historical data for further analysis. You can also utilize our API for custom integrations and projects.
Finally, as a thank you for actively contributing to the collective understanding of air quality, if you have an outdoor monitor and you’re sharing your data with us and OpenAQ, you’ll automatically gain access to all the premium features for that monitor without incurring any charge whatsoever.
We’re not going to flip a switch overnight. Instead, we’ll introduce these subscriptions slowly over the next few months, gradually reaching more customers. When subscriptions are enabled for your account, you will see a clear message on your dashboard explaining the changes and your options. You might not see this prompt for a while yet.
We really want to take this step carefully and are keen to have an open discussion with our community. We encourage you to share your thoughts and concerns.
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Join our NewsletterWe design professional, accurate and long-lasting air quality monitors that are open-source and open-hardware so that you have full control on how you want to use the monitor.
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