I’ve been using Process API for some time and it works great. Currently, I’m working on an ML model and looking for ways to reduce the costs of data fetching. The main difference between Process and Statistical APIs is that the former returns images/tiles whereas the latter stats about them (i.e. min/max etc). However, is there any significant difference in terms of PUs between those two APIs? Looking at the documentation it seems like there’s none unless I missed something? What’s the advantage of Statistical over Process API if I only need parcel stats? Is it only faster download?
You are correct, there should not be a significant difference in the PUs between the two APIs if you are calculating the same output. The advantage for you is that you only need to download the .json file return if using Statistical API, which is much smaller than an image file. If you are only interested in the statistics of your parcel, then this is perfect for you. However, if you also wanted to visualise the spatial variation of your parcel, then naturally, you would also want to request the image using Process API too.
Hope that this helps, if you have any other questions don’t hesitate to ask!