Frequently Asked Questions
Everything you need to know about Festival API
Festival API provides a comprehensive film festival database covering 14,000+ festivals across 30 categories and 192 countries. Data includes submission deadlines, fees, categories accepted, genres, eligibility requirements, contact info, and a proprietary Festival Score ranking festivals by relevance to your film.
Festival API uses a pre-paid credit system. Each API endpoint costs a certain number of credits per call. You purchase credit packs upfront, and credits are deducted from your balance as you make API calls. When your balance reaches 0, API calls return a 402 status until you purchase more credits.
We offer four credit packs: Starter (2,000 credits for $20, $0.01/credit), Pro (5,000 credits for $50, $0.01/credit), Business (22,000 credits for $200, $0.009/credit), and Scale (60,000 credits for $500, $0.008/credit).
Yes, credits expire 1 year after purchase. You will receive an email reminder when your balance is running low so you can plan accordingly.
Sign up for a free account to receive 50 free trial credits. Your API key will be displayed in your dashboard. Use the Bearer token authentication format: Authorization: Bearer *** Check the Docs page for full endpoint reference and code examples.
Every new account receives 50 free credits automatically on signup. No credit card required. 50 credits lets you make several API calls to explore the endpoints before purchasing a credit pack.
The Festival Score is a 0-100 composite score that factors in category match, genre alignment, deadline proximity, fee reasonableness, and historical acceptance patterns. A score of 80+ generally indicates a strong match for your film. Use the /v1/festivals/scored endpoint (10 credits) to get ranked results.
Festival API covers 14,000+ film festivals across 30 categories and 192 countries, including short film, feature, documentary, animation, horror, sci-fi, comedy, experimental, music video, and niche categories like AI film, VR/360, vertical short, web series, branded content, and creator content, plus cultural and diaspora festivals. Coverage spans six continents, with active expansion to more regions. Use the API to search by category, genre, country, deadline, and fee maximum.
API calls will return HTTP 402 Payment Required with a JSON body indicating your current balance and the required credits. Your integration should handle 402 responses by alerting the user or pausing API calls until credits are purchased.
No. Payment processing is handled entirely by Stripe. Festival API never sees or stores your card details. We only receive a confirmation from Stripe when a payment is completed.
Yes. Official client libraries for Python and Node.js are available:
Python: pip install festivalapi - PyPI
Node.js: npm install festivalapi - npm
Both are zero-dependency wrappers around the REST API. See the documentation for usage examples.
We've scouted over 14,000 film festivals across our discovery pipeline. The API currently serves 14,000+ active, verified festivals. We exclude festivals that appear defunct, dead websites, no recent events, no active submission calls, as well as those with insufficient verifiable data. The database grows continuously: new festivals are added as they launch, and previously excluded ones are re-added if they become active again.