Billing
Usage-based pricing, balance management, and invoices.
SMLL uses prepaid, usage-based billing. You top up your workspace balance, and charges are deducted based on actual resource usage.
How billing works
- Top up your workspace balance via Stripe (minimum £5, maximum £500 per session)
- Use resources — services, databases, storage
- Usage is metered every 5 minutes
- Charges are deducted from your balance automatically
All prices are in GBP (£).
Metered resources
| Resource | Unit | What's measured |
|---|---|---|
| Compute CPU | CPU-hours | Per service replica |
| Compute memory | GiB-hours | Per service replica |
| Database compute | Hours | Per running database |
| Database storage | GB-month | Disk usage |
| Persistent volume | GB-month | Service disk storage |
| Object storage | GB-month | S3 bucket usage |
| Network egress | GB | Outbound traffic |
Pricing
| Resource | Price | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| Compute (CPU) | $4.00 | per vCPU / month |
| Compute (memory) | $2.00 | per GB RAM / month |
| Database storage (NVMe) | $0.10 | per GB / month |
| Service storage (NVMe) | $0.06 | per GB / month |
| Object storage (S3) | $0.015 | per GB / month |
| Network egress | $0.05 | per GB |
| Log ingestion | $0.10 | per GB |
On-demand (scale-to-zero) services use the same rates but are billed per second of actual usage.
Free tier
Each workspace includes a free tier allowance:
- 1 PostgreSQL database (smallest instance size)
- 1 container service (smallest instance size)
- 1 GB object storage
- 5 GB network egress
Additionally, the following features are always free on every plan:
- Custom domains with automatic SSL
- Encrypted secrets management
- Metrics dashboards and alerting
- Uptime monitoring
- 30-day log retention
The free tier resets monthly. Usage within the free tier is not charged.
Balance management
View your current balance, transaction history, and top up from Settings → Billing.
Low balance warning
When your balance drops below £5.00, you'll receive a notification to top up.
Zero balance
When your balance reaches £0:
- Services are scaled down
- You'll be notified to top up
- Resources are not deleted — top up to resume
Cost estimation
Use the cost estimator in the billing dashboard to preview costs before creating resources. Enter the resource type, region, and expected usage to see estimated charges.
Transaction history
All balance changes are recorded:
| Type | Description |
|---|---|
| Top-up | Balance added via Stripe |
| Charge | Usage-based deduction |
| Adjustment | Manual correction by support |