Technical Specifications

Performance targets, reliability posture, and security design of the RefineX API.

API Overview

Response Time
Target: <200ms p99
Production goal; measured values may vary by region
Update Frequency
~Every 5 minutes
Market-dependent update cadence
Signal TTL
~15 minutes
Signals expire by design to prevent stale decisions
Authentication
API Key
Header-based: X-API-Key
Protocol
REST (JSON)
Standard HTTP methods
Supported Clouds
AWS
Additional cloud providers on the roadmap
Data Sources
Public pricing + market signals
No customer cloud account access required
Rate Limits
Tier-based
Free: 100 req/min, Paid: higher limits

Performance & Latency

Target: p99 latency under 200ms for signal retrieval endpoints. Actual performance may vary based on network conditions, query complexity, and geographic region.

Update cadence: Spot prices are ingested approximately every 5 minutes from supported cloud providers. Signal recalculation happens continuously as new data arrives.

TTL enforcement: All signals include an expires_at timestamp (typically ~15 minutes from creation). Expired signals are filtered from active responses.

Security & Safety Features

Read-Only Recommendations

RefineX never executes actions in your cloud. You control all workload placement decisions.

No Credentials Required

We consume public pricing data only. You never share cloud credentials with RefineX.

Signal Expiration

All signals have TTL (~15 min) and expire automatically to reduce risk of stale data.

Kill Switches

Admin-level controls to disable signal generation per cloud provider or globally.

Circuit Breakers

Automatic protection against bad data feeds or upstream API failures.

Governed Automation

Conservative defaults and admin gating. Designed for safe, deterministic behavior.

Reliability Posture

Read-only architecture: RefineX provides recommendations based on public market conditions. Client systems should implement safe fallback strategies (e.g., on-demand capacity) when signals are absent, expired, or confidence is low.

You control execution: RefineX does not launch, terminate, or migrate workloads. All capacity decisions remain under your infrastructure's control.

No guarantees: Spot market conditions change rapidly. Past signal accuracy does not guarantee future performance. Your systems should always have fallback logic.

Infrastructure

Current Support

  • • AWS EC2 Spot (multiple regions)
  • • REST API (JSON responses)
  • • API key authentication
  • • PostgreSQL + Redis storage

Roadmap

  • • GCP Preemptible VMs
  • • Azure Spot VMs
  • • Additional instance families
  • • Regional expansion

Compliance & Legal

Data processing: RefineX processes only public cloud pricing data. We do not require, store, or process customer workload data, cloud credentials, or personally identifiable information.

No SLA (MVP): The current version does not include formal SLA commitments. Enterprise plans may include optional SLA packages.

Liability: RefineX provides recommendations. You remain responsible for capacity planning, reliability design, and cloud costs incurred by your infrastructure.

Questions About Technical Implementation?

Check our API documentation or reach out for technical onboarding.