Pricing

Cube and every Managed Application are metered alike: a sandbox, a browser session and a database each run as instances of Cube, and each is billed by what its instances use.

• CPU: the CPU time an instance’s machine uses while it runs, as the host counts it: its vCPUs and the device threads working for it, to the microsecond. Time the host spends waiting on the machine’s behalf is not counted. A sleeping instance uses none.
• Memory: the memory the host holds for an instance while it is awake, and while it sleeps paused in the host’s memory, in steps of 128 MiB, by the second. Pages it shares with its template and has only read are not counted. An instance that sleeps any other way holds none.
• Requests: each request through the platform’s front door that a machine takes: at a Cube’s address or your own domain, at a sandbox’s preview links, and each SSH session.
• Traffic out: the bytes instances send to the internet, answers to requests included, and logs exported to your OpenTelemetry destinations, priced by the region of the machine they leave from.
• Stored: what a sleeping instance keeps (its memory image and the part of its disk that is its own; the template it was made from is free), snapshots, a volume’s data (the bytes in use, hour by hour, all of it kept in tiered storage) and what its backups take, by the GB-month.
• NVMe cache: the part of a volume kept on the machine’s NVMe, the size you set, from none (read at the network’s speed) to all of it, by the GB-month. Nothing is charged for writing or reading a volume.
• Logs: the bytes of what your Cubes’ instances print that is kept, as printed (not as stored, compressed), for as long as it is kept, by the GB-month. The lines for requests and for what the platform did cost nothing.

GET /v1/usage (or glac usage) gives these quantities by hour, day, instance or label, with the prices to multiply them by.

On Free, a day’s quota used up stops that one thing until 00:00 UTC: instances go to sleep when CPU or memory runs out, requests are answered with 429, and traffic to the internet stops. Free keeps at most 15 GB of data in all, as much of it on NVMe. Nothing is ever charged, and a Free account never owes.

On Paid, usage past a meter’s inclusion is charged at the list price and taken from your balance. When the balance is empty too, that meter stops:

• CPU or memory: every instance of the account goes to sleep, with its data, and nothing new is made until it can be paid for.
• Requests: requests to your instances are refused at the edges; the instances keep running.
• Traffic out: traffic to the internet stops, and so do requests to your instances, since every answer is traffic out.
• Logs: what your Cubes print from then on is not kept for the long term (it can still be read on the machine for a while); nothing else stops.
• What is stored (sleeping instances, snapshots, volumes and their cache, and backups) cannot stop, and nothing of it is deleted for this: it is still there, and its cost becomes a debt.

Everything starts again as soon as Credits arrive. If you have no balance and no auto reload, we email you when a meter reaches 80% and 100% of its inclusion.

Every account starts on Free, with no card. Moving to Paid takes a card: the $5 fee is charged at once, and the month’s inclusions start then. Moving back to Free happens when the month paid for ends; nothing is refunded, and what is left of the inclusions is not carried over.

On Paid, your balance is in Credits: one Credit pays for one dollar of usage past what the plan includes. A top-up is at least $20, charged to your card; the Credits arrive when the payment is collected. The Credits of a top-up last 12 months from that top-up, and we write 30, 7 and 1 days before they lapse.

Auto reload is off until you turn it on, and needs a card on record: when the balance falls below 5 Credits it tops up $20 (both numbers are yours to change). A new account may be charged at most $100 a month by auto reload and $500 a month by all top-ups; these rise after 30 and 90 days of payments. Credits cannot be withdrawn or moved to another account, and the plan’s fee is charged to the card, not taken from the balance.

Only a Paid account can owe, and only what is stored can take its balance below zero: sleeping instances, snapshots, volumes and backups. Less than $0.50 owed waits for the next top-up or subscription payment. From $0.50 the account is in debt: until it pays it can only read its bill, pay, and list, read and delete what it stores (or make a volume from a backup), and its instances sleep. We email when the debt starts and again on days 7, 14, 21, 27 and 29, and charge the card on record on the billing day.

If it still owes 30 days after the first email was delivered, everything the account stores is deleted: sandboxes and other instances, snapshots, volumes, backups, its own templates, and Cubes with their versions; the debt is then written off. The account itself stays, with its projects, keys, secrets, SSH keys, webhooks, domain registrations, events, audit log, ledger and bills. Deleting what you store stops a debt from growing.

Credits are not refunded, and Paid’s fee is not refunded when you cancel. We refund a payment only if it was charged in error or the law requires it, for example when a consumer withdraws under section 21.4 of the Terms of Service; nothing there limits a refund the law gives you.

Yes. We are not registered for tax in any country yet (GLAC PTY LTD is not registered for GST), so no tax is added to what your card is charged, and Credits are the amount you pay.