What is the difference between the public API and the private API?

Use cases:

• Public API -  Non-commercial, or academic use.
• Private API - Commercial or Government use is allowed. 

Request Rate: 

• Public API - 4 interactions per minute.
• Private API - Custom.

Additional Information:

• Public API - Basic.
• Private API - File and URL information provided by tools integrated in VirusTotal (PEinfo, PEiD, ExifTool, packers, sandbox links, sigcheck, etc.).

Sandbox data:

• Public API - None.
• Private API - Behavioral execution information, on files types supported by our sandboxes.

Goodware Info:

• Public API - None.
• Private API - We provide signals whether a given hash is goodware or not, products in which the file is found.

Search API :

• Public API - Only query by hash
• Private API -  Example searches:
  • "give me all samples that are detected with the following signature",
  • "give me all samples that are detected by more than 10 engines"
  • "give me all samples that contain a given PE section with the following hash", etc.
  • queries can be combined to build complex requests.

Notifications:

• Public API - None.
• Private API - YARA notifications on the samples received at VirusTotal.  (Note:  This requires VirusTotal Intelligence service).

Price:

• Public API - None.
• Private API - Paid, pricing depends on usage. Contact us tell us about your use case, and usage estimates for a quote.  

Terms of service: 

• Public API - Standard Terms of Service
• Private API - Premium services agreement.  

Service Level Agreement (SLA):

• Public API - None
• Private API - 99% uptime guarantee, details in premium services agreement.