Billing FAQ

You start at a $0 balance and top up to begin with topup (returns a checkout link). account_status shows your burn rate and runway. A stopped VM bills nothing — stopping is how you stop paying without losing the VM. Suspended (auto-triggered at zero balance) is the same mechanism, visible and recoverable for 30 days.

Quick answers to the money questions. For the rate model see Pricing; for exact rates ask the pricing tool.

Do I get free credit?

No — accounts start at a $0 balance and you top up to start, drawn down per second as you use resources. Check your balance any time with account_status.

How do I add funds?

top up $20

Your agent calls topup, which returns a short Stripe Checkout link you open in your browser. After you pay, wait_for_topup confirms the balance landed (and surfaces an invoice link). There’s no subscription — you pay for what you use, drawn down from your balance.

What’s my runway?

account_status returns your burn rate (cost per minute across all billing VMs) and runway (time until your balance hits zero at the current rate), plus per-VM status counts. Ask:

what's my burn rate and how long do I have?

What does each state cost?

• running — billing per second at the run rate of its current size.
• stopped — nothing. stop_vm releases the CPU, memory, and IP and archives the disk, so there’s nothing left to charge for. The VM is held ~30 days and start_vm brings it back.
• Suspended — nothing. The same mechanism as stopped, triggered for you when your balance hits zero (or you hit your monthly spend cap with the hard cap on). The VM stays visible so you know to top up, and a top-up resumes it automatically. Held ~30 days, then purged.
• Trash — nothing. A VM you deleted, recoverable for 24 hours with resume_vm before it’s purged for good.

Stopping a VM is how you stop paying for it without losing it. You don’t need to destroy anything. See Backups & restore for what survives each state.

The trade-off is time, not money: starting a stopped VM restores its disk onto a host with capacity and boots it, which takes tens of seconds rather than being instant.

How do I pay less?

• Stop VMs you aren’t using. A stopped VM is free.
• Size VMs to what they actually need. You choose vcpuMillicores + memMib, and resize_vm changes them live with no reboot — so you can start small and only grow when get_vm_metrics says you should. See VM sizing.

Can I cap my spend?

Yes. set_budget_settings sets a monthly spend cap for the account, with email and in-app alerts at 50% / 80% / 100%. Turn on the hard cap and every running VM is Suspended when you hit 100% — visible, recoverable, and resumed when you raise the cap or top up. get_budget_settings shows the current setting. Spend resets at 00:00 UTC on the 1st.

What about egress?

Outbound traffic is metered separately per GiB (inbound is free). The rate is in the pricing response as egressMicroCentsPerGib.