WorldWildMap is built by one person, a photographer and wildlife enthusiast, and funded by nobody. Below is the real cost of keeping it online, next to everything people have given. If the map has been useful, help keep it that way.
Counted from the database on 26 Sept 2026.
Every figure is counted from the database, not typed in. The occurrence records come from GBIF's openly licensed data; the photographs are Creative Commons work by naturalists on iNaturalist and Wikimedia Commons, credited on each species page.
Built in 290 commits over 19 working days since 10 Jul 2026. The AI assistance behind it, 6,546 model calls across 2.9 billion tokens, would cost about $2,042 at Anthropic's list prices. We pay for it through a flat $200 a month subscription while it is actively built, and that subscription, not the list-price figure, is what the table below counts.
What the atlas costs, line by line. The AI subscription that builds it is billed monthly; the running bills, since 28 Aug 2026, accrue day by day. Some are our share of a bill split with other KICKFLIP projects, shown in full so you can disagree with the share.
| What | Bill | Since | Accrued |
|---|---|---|---|
| Building the atlas The AI subscription that builds the atlas, at $200 a month while it is actively worked on. At Anthropic's list prices the same work would be about $2,042; the subscription is what we actually pay. | $200.00 a month | 10 Jul 20264 payments | €736.00 |
| Database and API server | €69.49 a month, 40% share | 28 Aug 202646 days | €42.01 |
| Off-site backups | €4.99 a month, 40% share | 28 Aug 202646 days | €3.02 |
| Photo storage and delivery | $0.05 a month | 3 Sept 202640 days | €0.06 |
| Web hosting | $20.00 a month, 3% share | 28 Aug 202646 days | €0.93 |
| Domain | $11.08 a year | 29 Aug 202645 days | €1.26 |
| Total so far | €783.27 | ||
That is about €215.30 a month at the moment, the subscription and the running bills together.
Donations cover 0% of the costs so far.
Net after payment fees: about €0.00. No donations yet.
Every donation, newest first. Names appear only when the donor asked for it.
No donations yet. The first one goes at the top of this list.
Payments are handled by Lemon Squeezy as merchant of record, which takes 5% plus 50 cents per donation; the amounts above are what people gave, the net figure is after that fee. Test transactions never appear here. This is not a charity and donations are not tax-deductible. USD lines are converted at 0.92 euro to the dollar.