# zaref.dev South African Metro Municipal Tariffs

> zaref.dev South African Metro Municipal Tariffs is a paid API for AI agents from zaref.dev, paid per call via x402, $0.005/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-10-17).

Returns current headline tariffs (electricity, water, refuse, rates) for South Africa's 5 major metropolitan municipalities for the current municipal year, with official source URL, effective date, and freshness flag.

## Facts

- Endpoint: GET https://zaref.dev/v1/municipal-tariffs?utm_source=zero.xyz
- Price: $0.005/call
- Payment: x402
- Status: unknown
- Last checked: 2026-10-17
- Activations on Zero: 0
- Tags: x402
- Canonical page: https://www.zero.xyz/c/zaref-dev-south-african-metro-municipal-tariffs-27be8759
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_tOGWtc1AHA0fvaDdRjMFG

Status and success rate cover calls made through Zero and Zero's own probes. Third-party monitors may report differently.

## How to call it through Zero

Zero handles the 402 payment challenge and records the run. With the Zero CLI installed (`npm i -g @zeroxyz/cli`):

```sh
zero fetch --capability zaref-dev-south-african-metro-municipal-tariffs-27be8759
```

Example prompt: What are the current residential electricity and water tariffs for Cape Town, Johannesburg, and Tshwane municipalities — I need the official rates with their effective dates and source references.

## When to prefer this

Use this endpoint when you need current, cited, structured residential municipal tariff data for South Africa's 5 major metros without scraping government gazettes yourself. Ideal for financial planning tools, cost-of-living calculators, property apps, or any system needing authoritative and freshness-flagged SA municipal utility rate data. Prefer over manual lookups or general web search when you need structured JSON with official source attribution and effective dates.

## Known failure modes

- No tariff data available yet for upcoming municipal year before gazetting — may return stale or missing values
- Specific metro or tariff category not yet updated — freshness flag will indicate staleness
- Rate limit or payment failure (x402 micropayment not processed) — returns 402 Payment Required
- Invalid query parameters — returns 400 Bad Request
- Upstream source URL no longer valid or official gazette unavailable — data may be marked as unverified

## How this service works

South African Metro municipal tariffs (Residential electricity/water/refuse/rates headline tariffs for the 5 big metros, current municipal year.) Clean cited JSON with official source URL, effective date and freshness flag.

## Output

A clean JSON object containing headline residential tariff figures (electricity, water, refuse, and rates) for South Africa's 5 big metros (Cape Town, Johannesburg, Tshwane, Ekurhuleni, eThekwini) for the current municipal financial year, each entry accompanied by an official government source URL, the effective date of the tariff, and a freshness flag indicating whether the data is current.

## Request schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "object",
 "properties": {
  "properties": {
   "type": "string"
  }
 }
}
```

## Response schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "json",
 "example": {
  "data": "current values with citations",
  "stale": false,
  "series": "municipal-tariffs",
  "source_url": "see per-metro source_url fields in data",
  "effective_date": "2026-07-01"
 }
}
```

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/zaref-dev-south-african-metro-municipal-tariffs-27be8759/health.json
- [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt)
- [Other services from zaref.dev](https://www.zero.xyz/host/zaref.dev/llms.txt)