How billing works
Machine prices, service fees, and how credits are deducted.
Appentic is prepaid. You add credits to your account, and Appentic deducts what your projects cost as they run. There are no invoices at the end of the month and no free tier.
What you pay for
Each project costs its machines' monthly prices plus a monthly fee for each service in it.
- Machines. The price shown when you choose or add a machine. It depends on the machine and the geo. A project with two machines pays for both. See Machines.
- Service fees. Every service has a flat monthly fee for its kind, whatever its memory, from $2 a month. The form shows the fee under Price when you create a service. Fees apply to:
- web services, workers and cron jobs
- databases, key value stores and storage services
- volumes, firewalls and load balancers
- a fixed outbound address and each connected network
- Database backups. Turning on backups for a database adds a fee of its own while they are on. The database's Settings show it. See Postgres backups.
- Storage used. Volumes and storage services also pay for what they store, per GB a month, on top of their fee. A volume pays for its size. A storage service pays for what its bucket holds, measured hourly. The form shows the price when you create one.
- Downloads from storage. Everything read from a bucket, including by your own services, is billed per GB at cost, with no markup. Uploads are free.
- Athena. Requests to Athena are deducted from your balance as it works. See Athena costs.
For example, with a $2 fee for each service, a project on a $15.00 machine with a web service, a database and two cron jobs costs $15.00 + 4 × $2.00 = $23.00 a month.
Custom domains, builds, logs, metrics and the shell cost nothing extra. Giving a service more memory doesn't change its fee. It uses more of the machine you already pay for.
Billed by the second
Monthly prices are charged by the second, with a month counted as 730 hours. The $23.00 a month project in the example costs about 3.15 cents an hour.
Every 5 minutes, Appentic works out what each machine and service cost since the last time and deducts it from your balance. A service you delete halfway through the month costs only the time it existed.
When billing starts and stops
| Starts | Stops | |
|---|---|---|
| Machine | When it has been set up, after you choose or add it | When you remove the machine or delete the project |
| Service fee | When you create the service | When you delete the service |
| Storage used | When you create the volume or storage service | When it has been removed |
Some things keep billing when you might expect them to pause:
- A stopped machine still pays its price, and the services on it pay their fees. See Stopping and starting.
- A stopped worker and a paused cron job still pay their fees.
- An empty machine still pays its price. Deleting every service on it doesn't remove the machine. Remove the machine, or delete the project, to stop paying for it.
Two things pause service fees:
- Suspending a web service pauses its fee until you resume it. See Maintenance mode and suspending.
- A suspended project pays no service fees while it is suspended. Its machines, and the storage its volumes and storage services use, are still billed. See Running out of credits.
A machine that couldn't be set up is never billed.
Who pays
Everything in a workspace is billed to the workspace owner's credits, including projects and services that collaborators create. See Workspaces and collaborators.
The Billing page
Open the user menu, choose User settings, then Billing.
| Section | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Current balance | Your Balance, the Monthly cost of the machines and services running now, and the Estimated runway in days. Once suspension is less than 72 hours away, it also says when your projects will be suspended. Add credits opens the top-up page. |
| Promo code | Shown only if Appentic emailed you a promo code. Enter it to add its credit. |
| Low-balance alerts | The balance at which Appentic emails you, and an extra address to email. See Low-balance alerts. |
| Transactions | Everything that changed your balance, newest first. Top-ups, promo codes, refunds and chargebacks have a line each. Running costs show as one line a day, and each request to Athena is its own line. |
| Usage | Each machine and service you have now, grouped by project, with its monthly price and the Monthly total. The Usage cost chart shows what was charged in each of the last 24 hours, including things you have since deleted. |
| Past projects | Projects you have deleted, how long each ran and what it cost in total. Open one to see what ran in it and what each part cost. |
When your balance falls to your alert balance, Appentic emails you. If it keeps falling, Appentic suspends your projects. See Running out of credits.