Billing lifecycle
How billing behaves once you upgrade, and the one setting that can bill you retroactively.
Billing belongs to the project owner, not the project. One billing account per owner, with included beats shared across every project that owner controls.
Own one project and it looks like a one-to-one mapping. Own three and usage rolls up across all three, with a per-project breakdown in the usage view so you can still see where it went.
Current prices and included beats are on drumbeats.io/pricing. Beats and usage has the formula.
What an invoice contains#
A base subscription, the flat monthly fee for Pro or Business, plus pay-as-you-go overage if it is enabled and you went over.
Promo codes discount the base subscription. They do not touch overage.
Understand pay-as-you-go#
PAYG is a Business feature. It is opt-in and off by default.
| Plan | PAYG | What happens past the included beats |
|---|---|---|
| Free | Not available | Hard cap at 200K. Quota bands apply |
| Pro | Not available | Hard cap at 1M. Quota bands apply |
| Business, PAYG off | Off by default | Quota bands apply |
| Business, PAYG on | Opt-in | Billed per extra beat up to your spending limit |
The quota bands are graduated rather than a cliff. You get a warning band, then a degraded band where pings are still recorded but payloads are dropped, then rejection with a 429. Beats and usage has the thresholds.
Monitors keep flipping and alerting through the degraded band. Losing payloads hurts triage, not detection.
Set a spending limit#
The limit is in USD, on the billing settings page. Enabling PAYG without naming a figure defaults to $100. The minimum you can set explicitly is $10. Setting it to null means unlimited, and it does exactly what it says.
There is no way to claw back overage once it has been recorded. If you enable PAYG, set a limit you would be comfortable seeing on the invoice.
Change plans#
Upgrades apply immediately. The new included beats and features are live as soon as it is confirmed.
Downgrades and cancellations wait for the period boundary. The current period stays active, usage tracking continues, and the change lands at the end of the cycle.
Owners and managers can both open the billing portal to manage payment methods, download invoice PDFs, and review the subscription. Only the owner can actually change the plan.
Watch your usage#
The billing usage view shows the current plan, the period start and end, included and used beats, PAYG overage and its estimated cost, the owner-wide total, and the top projects by consumption.
Those numbers are dashboard-only. There is no REST endpoint for them yet.
Keep hard control by leaving PAYG off#
If a predictable ceiling matters more than uninterrupted service, leave PAYG disabled and let the quota bands do their job. The degraded and rejected states are unpleasant, but they are bounded and you will never get a surprise invoice.
Next#
Beats and usage for the formula and the quota bands. Pricing for current tiers. Workspace setup for the team side.