Billing Lifecycle

Drumbeats billing is owner-wide — one billing account per project owner, with included Beats shared across every project that owner controls. This page covers the lifecycle once you upgrade past Free: how plans behave, what PAYG does, how plan changes propagate, and what the billing portal exposes.

Tier prices and included Beats are listed on drumbeats.io/pricing; the Beats & usage page covers the underlying usage model.

Owner-wide billing

Drumbeats billing rolls up to the project owner, not to the project.

• One billing account is tied to the project owner's user.
• Included Beats are shared across all projects owned by that account.
• Overage charges, invoices, and spending controls live at the owner level.
• Project-by-project usage still appears broken down in the usage view so you can attribute consumption.

A user who owns one project sees a 1:1 mapping between project and billing account. A user who owns three projects sees usage rolled up across all three with per-project breakdowns.

Plans

Drumbeats currently exposes three plans, each visible in the dashboard's billing settings:

• FREE
• PRO
• BUSINESS

The public comparison (price, included Beats, feature gating, current promotional state) lives on drumbeats.io/pricing. Pricing details are deliberately not duplicated in the docs so they cannot drift.

What you are billed for

A monthly invoice has two parts:

1. Base subscription — flat fee for Pro or Business.
2. PAYG overage (optional) — when usage exceeds the included Beats and PAYG is enabled.

Promo codes affect the base subscription price. They do not reduce PAYG overage charges.

PAYG overage

Pay-as-you-go (PAYG) is a Business-plan feature. It is opt-in and disabled by default on Business; Free and Pro hard-cap at the included Beats and do not offer PAYG.

Spending limit

• The spending limit is set in USD on the billing settings page.
• null means unlimited — billing continues indefinitely.
• New billing accounts default to a $100 limit when PAYG is enabled without a custom value.
• The minimum explicit spending limit is $10.

Retroactive overage when PAYG is enabled mid-cycle

If the billing account already accumulated recorded overage while PAYG was disabled, enabling PAYG mid-cycle bills that already-recorded overage retroactively. To avoid the retroactive charge, wait until the next billing cycle starts before enabling PAYG.

Billing portal

The hosted billing portal is the place to:

• Manage payment methods.
• Access invoice PDFs.
• Review subscription state.

Owners and managers can open the billing portal. Plan changes remain owner-controlled — MANAGER can open the portal but cannot upgrade or downgrade.

Plan changes

Upgrade

Upgrades apply immediately. The new plan's included Beats and feature set are available the moment the upgrade is confirmed.

Downgrade or cancel back to Free

Downgrades and cancellations are scheduled for the end of the current billing cycle via Stripe's cancel_at_period_end. Operationally:

• The current billing period stays active until the period end.
• Usage tracking continues during that period.
• Retention offers or promo flows may appear when cancelling, depending on account state.
• The downgrade takes effect at the period boundary.

Usage visibility

The billing usage view exposes:

• Current plan.
• Current billing period start and end.
• Included Beats.
• Used Beats.
• Additional Beats (PAYG overage).
• Estimated overage cost.
• Shared owner-wide usage across all projects the owner controls.
• Top projects by Beat consumption.

The same numbers are available through the dashboard's billing settings — there is no separate REST endpoint at launch.

Operational recommendations

Related guides

• Beats & usage — the usage formula, quota bands, and monthly examples.
• Pricing — current plan tiers and overage pricing.
• Workspace setup — onboarding and team setup.
• REST API — Projects — programmatic project / membership access; billing data is dashboard-only at launch.