> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://repocloud.io/docs/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Billing > Prepaid credit, Auto Recharge, usage and payment history, invoices, and what happens when your balance runs out ## Billing Overview RepoCloud uses a prepaid credit model. Your account carries a credit balance, and resource usage is metered hourly and deducted automatically. The **Billing** tab of your dashboard shows your balance, payment options, and usage history. It has three cards, **Top Up Your Balance**, **Auto Recharge**, and **Payment method**, followed by the billing history. ## Credit Balance Your current balance is displayed at the top of every dashboard page, as the link "Balance: $x.xx", and in the Billing tab. New accounts get free credit when they confirm their email. While Auto Recharge is off, an hourly charge that takes your balance below $3 sends the email "Urgent: Your RepoCloud Account Balance is Low!". An owner of Container Apps also gets it when a charge takes the balance below $2 and below $1. ## Adding Credit The **Top Up Your Balance** card at the top of the Billing tab shows your balance and a Stripe payment button, under a **One-Time Payment** label. It is a **one-time** purchase. Payments are processed by Stripe. When Stripe confirms the payment, the amount is added to your balance, it appears in Payment History as Top Up Balance, and an email follows. Nothing renews or repeats, and buying credit never changes your Auto Recharge settings. ## Auto Recharge **Auto Recharge** is a separate, optional card below **Top Up Your Balance**, with an On or Off pill. Instead of buying credit yourself each time, you give us a rule and we apply it for you: > When your balance falls below **$X**, we charge **$Y** to your primary card and add it to your balance. 1. In the **Auto Recharge** card, set **When my balance falls below** (the threshold) and **Recharge amount**. Both are whole dollars; the threshold can be $1 to $1,000 and the recharge amount $3 to $1,000. The card is pre-filled with $3 and $10 until you save your own values. A sentence in the card shows your rule as you type; a field that is empty or outside the allowed range shows a dash instead of an amount. 2. Click **Turn on Auto Recharge**. If you have no saved card yet, the button reads **Add card & turn on Auto Recharge** and takes you to a secure Stripe page to save one. Once Auto Recharge is on, the same button reads **Save settings**; while it is off and every saved card has expired, it reads **Add a new card**. 3. Use **Turn off** at any time. Your rule and your saved cards are kept. The card's **How it works** section is collapsed by default; click it to open a short list of the rules below. Good to know: - If your balance is already below the threshold when you turn Auto Recharge on, the recharge amount is charged right away. Saving new values while it is on charges at once too when the balance is below the new limit. - Balances are checked once an hour. If one recharge doesn't lift your balance back above the threshold, the next check charges again. - We charge your primary card first. If a charge is declined, we try your other saved cards; if every card is declined, Auto Recharge is turned off and we email you. A successful recharge sends "Auto Balance Recharge Successful!", and one made with another card sends "Payment Notification: Fallback Card Used" with the last four digits of that card. With one saved card, a decline sends "Urgent: Payment Notification - Transaction Failed" and turns Auto Recharge off; when no card works it turns off and sends "Urgent: Payment Notification - All Cards Failed". A problem that is not a declined card switches nothing off, and the next hourly check tries again. - Managing your cards in the **Payment method** section (adding, editing, making primary or deleting a card) never turns Auto Recharge on or off. The one exception: deleting your last saved card turns it off, because there is nothing left to charge. > [!TIP] > > Set the limit higher than your hourly spend, so your balance can't run out between checks. ## How Billing Works ### Hourly Metering Resource usage is measured and billed on an hourly basis: - **Container Apps with autoscaling**: billed at the rate of the tier your instance used each hour (the tier is chosen from one reading of memory and CPU taken by the hourly run; see [Autoscaling](https://repocloud.io/docs/pricing/autoscaling.md)) - **Container Apps with fixed tier**: billed at the fixed tier's hourly rate - **VPS Apps**: billed at the selected tier's hourly rate - **Paused Container Apps**: a Container App you paused yourself pays 25% of its tier price plus any extra SSD in full. An app that RepoCloud paused because the balance reached zero is not billed - **Paused VPS Apps**: billed at the full hourly rate (dedicated IPv4 and disk remain allocated); the history shows these hours as "Instance Billing Hourly (Paused)" ### Data Transfer Data transfer in is free. Every instance, Container App or VPS App, includes a free monthly allowance of outbound data transfer that depends on its tier, from 1 TB for Tier 1 to 10 TB for Tier 7 (see [Pricing Tiers](https://repocloud.io/docs/pricing/tiers.md) for every tier). Outbound data transfer beyond the allowance is billed at $0.10 per GB. The allowance is counted per instance and starts again at the beginning of each calendar month. Only data that leaves your instance for the internet counts: traffic between the parts of your own project, such as an application and its database, is not counted. ### Paused Billing A Container App you pause pays 25% of its tier price, and any extra SSD is still billed in full. Pausing a **VPS App** does not reduce billing — the full hourly rate continues because the dedicated IPv4 address and disk remain allocated; the same holds when you power the server off. To stop billing entirely, delete the instance. ### When Your Balance Reaches Zero **Container Apps**: at zero, RepoCloud pauses your Container Apps and emails you. An app paused for a low balance is not billed. Once your balance is above $0.40, a check that runs every two minutes starts the app again: the dashboard shows Deploying while it restarts, and an email says the app has been unpaused. If the balance stays at zero, RepoCloud deletes the app with its data. An email may go out before that, but do not wait for it. An app you paused yourself follows the same rules once the balance reaches zero. RepoCloud pauses a multi-container app too. **VPS Apps**: RepoCloud pauses the server and most management actions are disabled (see [Managing VPS Apps](https://repocloud.io/docs/manage/vps-apps.md) for what stays available). RepoCloud emails the owner when it pauses a server ("Urgent: Your RepoCloud VPS Has Been Paused") and may send reminders before the deletion; a reminder is not guaranteed. If the balance stays at zero, RepoCloud deletes the server with its data, snapshots, and IPv4 reservation; a server you powered off yourself is not exempt. When your balance goes above zero, a server RepoCloud paused starts again by itself and you get the email `Your VPS is Back Online`; a server you powered off yourself stays off until you press **Power On**. ### VPS Additional Costs | Resource | Cost | |----------|------| | Snapshots | $0.10 per GB per month (VPS Apps only, at most 5, billed hourly on the total size of the live snapshots; shown as "Snapshot Storage") | | Bandwidth (excess outbound) | $0.10 per GB beyond the tier's free allowance (shown as "Data Transfer Out") | | Dedicated IPv4 | Included at no extra charge | ### First-Hour Billing Every app is charged for its first hour when its deployment starts. A VPS App is charged at once; a Container App's first hour shows as "Initial Instance Cost". If a VPS deployment fails, RepoCloud refunds that first hour automatically ("Refund: deployment failure"). ## Usage History The billing history shows a **Usage History** table with hourly billing records for all your instances, with the columns Date, App, Project, Description, Unit, and Amount. The billing history card appears once your account has at least one usage row or payment, and each table appears only when it has rows. Times are UTC, and amounts show four decimals. You can: - Browse entries with pagination: 10 rows a page, newest first, with Previous and Next buttons and the line "Page N of M" with the number of records - Download the history as CSV: **Download CSV** exports every usage row of your account, not only the page on screen, newest first, as `billing_history.csv` with the columns Instance ID, Project Name, APP Name, Date, Service Description, Service Unit, and Amount. It holds no payments The Description column uses these values: | Description | Meaning | |-------------|---------| | Instance Billing Hourly | The hourly charge of an app at its tier price. For a Container App you paused, the Unit column starts with "Paused instance" and the amount is 25% of the tier price | | Initial Instance Cost | The first hour of a Container App | | Extra SSD | The hourly charge for the extra SSD of a Container App | | Instance Billing Hourly (Paused) | A paused VPS App, billed at the full tier price | | Snapshot Storage | The hourly charge for the snapshots of a VPS App | | Data Transfer Out | Outbound data transfer beyond the tier's free allowance | | Refund: deployment failure | The first hour of a failed VPS deployment, credited back | ## Payment History Payment History lists the payments and credits recorded on your account, newest first: - **Date**: shown in UTC - **Description**: **Top Up Balance** for a one-time purchase from the **Top Up Your Balance** card, **Auto Recharge** for an automatic recharge. Other credits, such as an affiliate credit top-up, show their own description. - **Amount**: shown with two decimals - **Invoice**: a button named Invoice opens the invoice in a new tab. It shows its number, the date, "Bill to" with the company, name, phone, and email you have set, the item "RepoCloud.io Platform Credit", Total, Amount paid, and a Due balance of $0.00, with PDF and Print buttons Payment history is paginated: 10 rows a page, with Previous and Next buttons. ## FAQ > **What happens when my balance reaches zero?** > > **Container Apps**: RepoCloud pauses them, and an app paused for a low balance is not billed. Once your balance is above $0.40 they start again. If the balance stays at zero, RepoCloud deletes the app with its data. > > **VPS Apps**: servers are paused and most management actions are disabled (see [Managing VPS Apps](https://repocloud.io/docs/manage/vps-apps.md) for what stays available). When your balance goes above zero the servers RepoCloud paused start again by themselves; a server you powered off yourself stays off until you press **Power On**. If the balance stays at zero, RepoCloud deletes the server, a powered-off server included. > **Can I get a refund?** > > The [Terms](https://repocloud.io/terms) say credits do not expire, are non-refundable, and cannot be exchanged for cash. The one automatic refund is the first hour of a VPS deployment that fails ("Refund: deployment failure"). For any other question about a charge, contact [support](https://repocloud.io/docs/manage/support.md); no refund is promised. > **Is there a minimum balance for VPS deployments?** > > Yes. VPS deployments require a balance greater than $3. A Container App needs a balance of at least $0.50: below that the deploy page says there are insufficient funds and sends you to Billing. On a VPS App's deploy page, with a balance of $3 or less, the page asks for a deposit of a minimum of $1. Add credit with a payment: VPS Apps need a balance above $3, and the deploy page tells you when to deposit. > **How do I stop billing for an instance?** > > Delete the app: it is the only way to stop billing completely. A Container App you pause pays 25% of its tier price plus any extra SSD; a VPS App pays the full price whether it is running, paused, or powered off. ## Next Steps > **[Pricing Overview](https://repocloud.io/docs/pricing/overview.md)** > > Understand the full pricing model including tiers and autoscaling > **[Dashboard](https://repocloud.io/docs/manage/dashboard.md)** > > Monitor all your instances from one place