What is charged
You are charged for each full minute an instance is running, at the hourly rate of its size divided by sixty. Queueing, provisioning and wiping are not charged. Prices are in US dollars and shown on the pricing page.
Top-ups
Top-ups use Stripe Checkout. You can pay by card, WeChat Pay, Alipay or stablecoin, subject to availability for your region. A top-up is credited when the payment provider confirms it, and the same confirmation is never credited twice.
Your ledger
Your balance is not a single editable number. Every top-up, charge, credit and refund is a separate line that is only ever added, and the balance is the sum of those lines. You can see every line in the console, so the bill and the minutes an instance ran can always be reconciled.
When your balance runs low
- When the balance covers less than about two hours of what you have running, we email you a warning.
- If the balance reaches zero, you get a 30 minute grace period.
- If you have not topped up by the end of the grace period, the instance is deleted and its data is destroyed.
Because data is not kept after deletion, those two emails matter. Make sure the address on your account is one you read.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a minimum charge per rental?
No. Billing is per full minute of running time.
Will I be billed for a restart?
The instance stays running during a restart, so the minutes are billed like any other running time.