How the monthly cap works for instances

The monthly cap is a billing ceiling for an instance. It limits how many credits you can be billed for eligible instance usage within a single calendar month.

What the monthly cap does

• It sets a maximum amount of eligible usage charges per instance for each calendar month.
• Once the cap is reached, additional eligible usage in that same month is no longer billed.
• At the start of a new calendar month, billing progress toward the cap resets.
• In the first month an instance is created on a paid plan, or upgraded to a paid plan, the cap is adjusted based on the day of the month when the paid plan starts.

First-month cap adjustment (prorated)

To keep billing fair, the monthly cap is reduced in the first calendar month when paid billing starts.

• The cap is lowered according to how much of that month remains.
• If you start around the middle of the month, the effective cap for that first month is roughly half of the normal monthly cap.
• From the next calendar month onward, the normal full monthly cap applies again.

Why this model exists

The monthly cap is designed as a middle ground between pure on-demand pricing and fixed monthly plans:

• On-demand pricing is flexible, but the unit price is higher. Most customers run their servers during active hours (for example, daytime/evening), while infrastructure still needs to be available during lower-usage periods.
• Traditional monthly plans often require commitments (commonly 1 to 12 months).
• Monthly cap gives you no-commitment flexibility while still protecting you from unlimited monthly spend on long-running instances.

This makes it especially useful for instances that run 24/7, or long enough in a month to reach the cap.

What is not included in the monthly cap

The monthly cap does not include all billing components.

• Disk storage charges are billed separately.
• Backup storage charges are billed separately.

These charges continue even after the monthly cap is reached. Keeping storage and backup billing separate helps us offer larger storage options sustainably.

Practical example

If your instance reaches its monthly cap on compute usage before month-end:

• eligible compute usage stops increasing your bill for the rest of that calendar month
• storage and backup charges can still appear, because they are outside the cap

If you enable paid billing in the middle of a month:

• the first month's cap is reduced proportionally for the remaining days
• starting from the second month, the cap returns to the standard full monthly value

Summary

The monthly cap gives you predictable monthly limits on eligible instance usage without forcing long-term commitments, while storage-related costs remain separate.