Plans and pay as you go

There are three ways to pay, chosen under Account → Billing → How you pay: Free, a monthly plan, or pay as you go. The choice belongs to your account and applies to every workspace whose billing owner you are. Plan prices and quotas are on the Pricing page.

Plans and pay as you go are available now. Prices are on the pricing page; usage is charged with your monthly renewal.

Before any checkout or plan change, tick I agree to the Terms of Service and the Refund Policy: read the Terms of Service and the Refund Policy.

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Free

Free costs nothing and needs no payment method. Each workspace you own gets the Free quota. It is a hard limit, and you are never charged.

Anything with a price is not available on Free: load balancers of a paid tier, Kubernetes workers of a paid size, highly available clusters, and Kubernetes storage beyond what is free. Team features, such as creating teams and inviting members, need a paid plan.

Anything with a price needs a payment method, so on Free it is refused with Add a valid payment method first.

Monthly plans

Starter, Pro and Scale each have a monthly fee. Each workspace you own gets the plan's quota: vCPU, memory, disk and load balancers.

To buy a plan, select Choose Starter, Choose Pro or Choose Scale. From Free, the secure checkout opens, and the plan applies as soon as the payment is confirmed, usually within seconds. The card you pay with is saved, and pays for the plan from then on.

Metered products are billed by the hour at pay-as-you-go prices, on top of the fee: load balancers of a paid tier, Kubernetes workers of a paid size, and Kubernetes storage. They are shown in This month as you use them, and charged with your monthly renewal.

Pay as you go

There is no monthly fee: everything you use is metered by the hour and charged with your monthly renewal. It needs a payment method, and a monthly spending limit applies.

From Free, select Choose Pay as you go. The secure checkout opens, where you add the card that pays, and pay as you go applies as soon as it is confirmed. From a plan, the switch takes effect at the end of the current billing period: see Switch between a plan and pay as you go.

Change plan

To move to a bigger plan, select its Choose button, such as Choose Pro. Before you confirm, the Billing page shows what you pay now for the rest of the current billing period. Upgrades apply immediately. If the payment is declined, your plan does not change.

To move to a smaller plan, select its Choose button too. Before you confirm, the Billing page shows what is credited to your next bill, and the change applies immediately. Nothing running is stopped, but a workspace over its new quota can't create more until it fits. The Billing page names it before you confirm.

While a payment is overdue, your plan can't be changed until it is paid.

Switch between a plan and pay as you go

From a plan, select Choose Pay as you go. Your plan stays until the end of the current billing period, then pay as you go starts; the Billing page shows the date. Until then, Keep my plan undoes the switch.

From pay as you go, select a plan's Choose button. Before you confirm, the Billing page shows what you pay now for the rest of the current billing period, and the plan applies immediately.

Cancel a plan

Select Switch to Free under How you pay. Your plan stays until the end of the current billing period. Then the account moves to Free, and each workspace you own gets the Free quota.

• Before you confirm, the dialog lists what changes: the Free quota for each workspace you own, and that anything with a price then needs pay as you go.
• If you still run anything with a price, such as a paid load balancer or paid-size Kubernetes workers, canceling is refused. Delete those first, or choose pay as you go instead, so they keep running and are billed by usage.
• Until the period ends, you can change your mind with Keep my plan.

Kubernetes on a plan

Kubernetes workers of a paid size are only metered: they are billed by the hour and never also count against the plan's quota, so nothing is billed twice. On your bill, Kubernetes appears as:

• Kubernetes workers, by size: Small, Medium and Large. Free workers cost nothing. A highly available cluster's extra cost is included in its Kubernetes workers line.
• Kubernetes storage, billed per GB.

Both are shown in This month at list prices as they are used, and charged with your monthly renewal.

Next steps

• Billing — who pays, and a tour of the Billing page
• Payment methods — the cards that pay your plan
• Spending limits and restrictions — what limits an account
• Pricing — plan prices and quotas, and metered prices