How billing works

#The short version

1. Your organization holds a credit balance, which you top up by card, or by bank transfer if you are billed in naira.
2. Creating a virtual machine or database takes an upfront payment of 40% of its monthly estimate. It comes from your credit if your credit covers the whole amount, otherwise your saved card is charged the whole amount. It is never split between the two. Kubernetes nodes take no upfront payment; see Kubernetes clusters.
3. Usage is metered by the hour, for every started hour, and rated through the billing period. There is no monthly cap: you pay for the hours you use.
4. When the period closes, usage is invoiced, with VAT of 7.5% added on top. Your upfront payments are deducted from the invoice, not added on top. Your credit comes off what is left, and your saved card is charged for the rest.

VAT is charged on that invoice only: not on activation credits, top-ups or upfront payments. Prices and estimates exclude VAT. See VAT.

The Billing page shows your balance, what you have spent this period, what it projects you will spend by the end of it, and when the period closes.

#Your billing date

A period closes, and its invoice is issued, on your billing date: the last day of the month, or a fixed day of the month. Owners and Admins can change it: on Billing, open the Billing date card, choose The last day of the month or A fixed day of the month, and save. The new date starts after the current period, so nothing is billed twice; until then the card shows it as pending.

#Your currency

The currency is set by the country your organization is registered in, when you set it up, and cannot be changed afterwards. Organizations billed in naira pay through Flutterwave; see paying in naira.

#Activation credits

To activate a new organization you add activation credits to its credit balance: ₦1,000 if it is registered in Nigeria, billed in naira, or $1 anywhere else, billed in US dollars. This is not a fee, and carries no VAT. Activation credits are credit like any top-up, and pay for anything billed to the organization: virtual machines, databases, Kubernetes clusters and invoices. They do not expire while your account is active. Like all credit, they cannot be refunded or withdrawn as cash, and they are lost if the organization is deleted.

#Virtual machines

The create form's summary shows three figures before you commit, all excluding VAT. The database form shows the same ones; the Kubernetes form shows Upfront payment: None (see Kubernetes clusters).

• Upfront payment (40%): 40% of what the machine costs if it runs all month, paid when you press Create VM. If your credit covers the whole amount it is taken from there; otherwise your saved card is charged. With no saved card and too little credit, the machine is not created. The payment is deducted from your next bill, not added on top, and anything left over carries to the bills after it. If the build fails, the part not yet used goes back to your credit balance, never to your card.
• If it runs all month: an estimate for running it around the clock for an average month of 730 hours. It is not a cap: you are billed for the hours it runs, so a 31-day month at 24/7 costs a little more, and a machine that runs for part of a month costs less.
• If it’s stopped all month: disk storage only, because a stopped machine keeps its disk and your data. Depending on the size, that is roughly a sixth to a quarter of the running price.

Billing is by the hour, so you are not committing to a month. vCPU, memory and the machine’s IPv4 address are billed only while it runs; its disk is billed for as long as it exists, running or stopped. Deleting a machine stops its billing, and the part of its upfront payment not yet deducted from a bill goes back to your credit balance, where it shows in Transactions as Upfront payment returned after VM deleted.

A database's upfront payment works the same way: it goes back to your credit balance if the build fails, and when you delete a database, the part not yet deducted from a bill goes back to your credit balance too, never to your card. The hours it ran up to the delete are still billed.

#An example

A Starter machine (1 vCPU, 2 GB memory, 25 GB disk) shows:

You create it, paying ₦6,813.60 from your credit, and delete it after 10 days of running around the clock. You pay for those 240 hours, about ₦5,600. The upfront payment covers that, and the remaining ₦1,213 or so goes back to your credit balance.

#Kubernetes clusters

A Kubernetes cluster has no fee of its own. Each of its nodes, control and worker, is a VM of the cluster's node plan and is billed as one, by the hour, so a cluster of 1 control node and 2 workers costs three VMs. Nothing is paid up front, neither when you create a cluster nor when you add workers.

Your account's funding is checked instead. To create a cluster you need a saved card, or enough credit to cover 40% of a month for every node it can run: its control nodes plus its workers, or the autoscaling maximum. Adding workers, or raising the maximum, is checked the same way for the nodes added. Each node is priced as a VM of the node plan without a public IP. Without either, the change is refused with 402 INSUFFICIENT_CREDIT and nothing is built.

• Volume storage: the storage your workloads claim through persistent volumes is billed as storage, with the nodes' disks, by the hour for as long as the volumes exist. The cluster's page shows it as Volume storage.
• Autoscaling: you pay for the workers the autoscaler runs, hour by hour. Your funding is checked for the maximum number of workers when you turn autoscaling on or raise the maximum, so the cluster can always grow to it.
• A stopped cluster pays for its nodes' disks and its volume storage.
• A public or dual cluster's own public address is billed as a static IP, by the hour, for as long as the cluster holds it. A private cluster has none.
• Deleting a cluster stops its billing at once; its nodes are destroyed within minutes.

#What costs money while idle

The overview's Needs attention panel adds these up as idle spend:

Destroy what you no longer need, rather than stopping it.

#What is free

Subnets, security groups, network ACLs, load balancers, the Kubernetes control plane (beyond its nodes) and the serial console cost nothing. The static IP a load balancer uses is billed as a static IP.

#Related