Billing

How it works

A plan, any rung from $10 to $1,000 a month, lands at least that much credit every cycle; every box meters against it by the second, quoted by the hour:

• Pausing keeps the money. Pause from the dashboard or with auto-pause; prized ssh wakes the box.
• A box that failed to launch costs nothing. It meters at zero until you delete it; usage from before a later failure still counts.
• Credit rolls over up to two months of your plan; the excess lapses when a cycle's credit lands, as its own line in your activity. Top-up and free credit are spared that trim for two months after they land.
• Each rung runs one size around the clock: $10 a Nano, $100 a Small, $1,000 an Extra Large. The credit spends on any mix.
• Long cycles land more credit. Rates assume 730 hours; a calendar cycle of up to 744 lands proportionally more, at no extra charge.
• A fleet bigger than the biggest rung gets a plan sized exactly to it: an Extra Large plus a Small is a $1,100/mo plan.

Free credit

New workspaces get $30 of free credit, once per person, as the owner walks through onboarding or first signs in with prized login through the browser; it spends like paid credit, and the tour starts a box on it with no card. It does not refill: at zero, boxes pause (Running out) and the dashboard opens on the plan picker. Choosing a plan keeps what is left, and the first cycle's credit lands at once. A workspace whose owner already took the free credit, on the same email address or the same Google or GitHub account, gets none, including after erasing the first workspace.

An owner who signs up from a Sandboxes link gets the same credit with no tour and no box: the dashboard opens on Sandboxes.

While the workspace runs on the free credit alone:

All three lift the moment a plan is live; a box started on the credit keeps its settings.

A box on the free credit sleeps when nobody is using it. After 2 hours idle it pauses itself (Auto-pause), so the credit goes on the hours you use it: asleep, a box costs only its disk. It never pauses itself in its first 24 hours, while the first sync and setup land. prized ssh or prized up wakes it, with everything where you left it. Change the window or switch it off per box on its dashboard page or with prized box auto-pause BOX 4h (or off); a plan lifts the default, and a window you set stays.

Sandboxes on the free credit run within the free tier: up to 4 at once, each up to 2 vCPU, 4 GB of memory and 60 minutes. They draw on the credit at the sandbox rates, and the full-CPU rule above holds for them too. A top-up or a plan lifts them to the full quotas.

Sizes and rates

The last column is the most a box can cost in a month, and the plan that runs it around the clock. The pricing page compares renting the same machine elsewhere. GPU boxes are billed by the hour from the prepaid balance only, never on overage.

Sandboxes

Sandboxes spend the same balance, metered per second with no minimum by the shape they hold: running, by vCPU, memory, and disk; paused, by disk and saved memory only.

• Any balance above zero starts them. On the free credit alone they run within the free tier; once the workspace has paid in (a plan or a top-up), the full quotas apply. An empty balance answers 409 insufficient_balance. No plan is needed, and the four-hour check for boxes does not apply.
• Their life is capped. Every sandbox is deleted at its maxRuntimeMin, 24 hours at most, so a forgotten one cannot bill past that (Automatic pause and delete).
• At zero, they pause. With overage off, running sandboxes pause when the balance runs out and stay paused until you resume them; with it on, they keep running, as boxes do.
• A sandbox that never came up costs nothing, like a box that failed to launch.
• Every size bills at the same rates. A large sandbox pays per vCPU and per GB exactly as a small one does, and nothing for the minute or two it may take to start.

Choosing and changing the plan

The owner picks a plan on the Billing page, or on the tour's payment step once the free credit is spent. Payment is Stripe Checkout, cards only, and the first cycle's credit lands before you are back; with no box yet, choosing a plan starts one at the size that rung runs around the clock, in the region picked with it (Oregon if none).

Past $1,000/mo the ladder grows one more rung, sized to your boxes. The balance and plan belong to the workspace: everyone spends the same balance and can see the Billing page; only the owner changes the plan, buys top-ups, switches overage, or opens the Stripe portal.

Topping up

The owner can buy one-time top-ups on the Billing page: $10 to $250 by card, as often as needed, in your balance right away and never changing what the plan bills. With overage on, you need none.

A spent free credit needs no plan. The plan picker it opens on also offers a one-time top-up of $10, $25 or $50, by card. Paused boxes start again. The free credit's box limits stay until you choose a plan, and a top-up leaves each box's auto-pause as it is (2 hours unless you changed it).

When we tell you

• Dashboard banner when less than two days of credit remain at the current rate; others in overage, after boxes were suspended, while a renewal is being collected or a payment is failing, and before the account is funded.
• prized status prints a credit line when the balance is running low or empty, and says whether boxes keep running (overage, a renewal collecting, or a failed renewal's grace). When the balance has stopped them, it prints the link to the Billing page.
• Reaching for a paused box says why when the balance is what stopped it: prized ssh, prized up, plain ssh <box>, an editor's remote session and sync print which credit ran out, that nothing was deleted, and the link to the Billing page, instead of a connection error.
• Email to the workspace's address and every owner, at a quarter and a tenth of what the last cycle left you, and once each on crossing into overage, on boxes pausing, and on a failed payment; at most two reminders if you never started a plan.

Overage

Off by default: out of credit means boxes pause, and nothing bills past what you put in. The owner can switch it on from the Billing page, and running out then stops nothing:

Running out

With overage off, without a plan, or while a payment is failing past its grace, the balance is the hard stop: at zero, boxes suspend. Disks are kept, with your work, installed tools, and git state. Boxes the stop paused start again on their own once the next cycle, an upgrade, a top-up, or overage can run them for four hours; a box you woke, paused, or deleted since is left as you left it. Suspended boxes meter their disk at the sleep rate, and usage the balance cannot cover is written off, never turned into a debt. Until then, anything that tries to reach a box the balance stopped is told so, with the link to pick a plan or add credit (When we tell you).

Renewal day is not running out. A renewal takes about an hour to collect, so a plan that reaches zero after it renews pauses nothing until the payment goes through, for up to six hours, and that time bills from the new cycle's credit. If the payment fails, the seven-day grace under Failed payments takes over; if the six hours end with neither, your boxes pause. Usage recorded during the wait keeps its running rate and is paid from your next credit, not charged as overage. An unpaid upgrade does not extend this renewal window or delay suspension at zero.

If a box stays paused after funds return, resume it yourself. A pause whose intent is uncertain is never undone automatically.

Starting and resizing boxes

With overage off, a create, a wake, or a resize needs enough balance to run the resulting fleet for four hours, counting every box at the disk it actually has; while a renewal collects or a failed renewal is in its grace, a box from the fleet already running when collection began can be woken without that balance unless failed-launch cleanup is still reserving allowance. Waking a previously parked box with credit and pausing it again does not add it to that protected fleet. A box paused before its first start still needs normal funding.

It is a check, not a charge: a refusal says what the fleet would burn and what the balance would need. A resize meters at the new rate at once; a box mid-change cannot be resized until it settles.

A failed launch still reserves its allowance until its cleanup finishes, even if you delete it. That reservation is not billed, but it still counts against box limits and member policy limits. A failed box cannot be resized. While it is pending and overage is off, even a wake during renewal collection or payment grace needs the full four hours of fleet allowance; add credit or wait for cleanup.

A region move keeps the hourly rate but copies the whole disk, so it needs a funded balance (Regions). Its caps, and every other, are on Limits.

When a new or resized box would cost more around the clock than your plan puts in each month, the owner is offered the covering plan (with no plan yet, a first one). Resize offers it as one extra click, quoting the charge due today, and declining just resizes; Create pre-selects it, and unchecking creates on your current plan. Nothing charges without the page saying so first, and the prepaid balance is the only thing that gates a box.

Failed payments

A failed renewal of a plan that has paid before keeps your boxes running for seven days from the first failure, whatever the balance reads; the banner, the Billing page, prized status, and the email name the minute it ends. Overage is off meanwhile, so nothing more goes past zero: the time the boxes run waits, at the rate it ran, for the payment to cover. A box that was running at renewal can be woken again after a pause; a box already asleep before renewal, new boxes, and resizes need enough credit. These wakes still need the failed-launch cleanup allowance.

Stripe retries the card on its own schedule; the owner updates it in the Stripe portal, linked from the Billing page, and the charge retries on its own. Paid, nothing changes; still unpaid after seven days, or the plan cancelled, the balance is the hard stop again and boxes pause at zero.

Any other failed payment (an upgrade's charge, or a plan's first) suspends nothing by itself: boxes keep running on what remains, and pause at zero.

Fully refunded or reversed plan payments do not qualify for renewal grace. A refund of your last qualifying plan payment ends that grace.

A refund, or a payment your card issuer pulls back (a dispute), takes the credit it bought out of the balance; a dispute also pauses the plan's billing and switches overage off while it stands. Won, the credit is restored, billing resumes, and overage returns with your next successful payment; lost, the plan is cancelled and overage stays off until you pick a plan again.

Receipts

Every cycle produces a Stripe invoice you can download. The Billing page's recent activity lists each cycle's credit and one usage line per hour; card details, invoices, and receipts are in the Stripe portal, linked there for the owner.

Custom plans

A fleet bigger than the largest rung needs no special deal: the plan sizes itself to your boxes (above). For a startup deal or a negotiated amount, email team@prized.ac for a link (it expires after 30 days) the owner opens to subscribe at that amount in one click, or to move an existing plan; it then behaves like any other plan. A custom plan also unlocks zero data retention.