Billing & Pricing

How pricing works

Every billable resource you create has its own monthly price tag. Spin up a Pico service for €1/mo, a Micro Postgres for €4/mo, a queue for €5/mo — they stack independently. There's no "Starter plan" to outgrow; you only pay for what you spin up.

Full per-size breakdown lives on the Pricing page. Same numbers feed your dashboard Cost breakdown card.

Free tier

Every team gets one always-free Nano service (256 MB, auto-sleeps after 60 min idle and wakes on the next request), one always-free Starter Postgres (5 GB included storage), one cron job, and one preview environment per project. No card required. Free-tier bandwidth is capped at 50 GB/month (hard cap, no overage bill). Once you want anything bigger — an always-on Pico/Micro service, a second database, a queue, a search cluster, a persistent volume — add a payment method in Settings → Billing.

Adding a payment method

When you try to create a paid resource without a card on file, the dashboard redirects you to Stripe Checkout in setup mode. You enter a card, Stripe returns you to the dashboard, and from that point your team is billed on the Stripe subscription HostStack maintains for you. The subscription items track the resources you have running — resize a service or add a queue and the line items update automatically. EU VAT is calculated automatically via Stripe Tax based on your billing address.

Usage Tracking

HostStack tracks the following metered usage on top of per-resource fees:

• Bandwidth — Outbound data transfer per month. 200 GB free for paid teams, €0.01/GB beyond. Free-tier teams have a 50 GB/month hard cap (no overage bill — the platform returns 503 until next month or you upgrade).
• Build minutes — CPU-time used by build workers. 500 minutes free, €0.005/minute beyond.
• Volume storage — €0.10 per GB-month for every persistent disk attached to a service, beyond the disk included with the service tier.

Resizing & adding resources

Resize a service to a larger size or spin up a new resource at any time from the dashboard. Stripe prorates the difference for the remainder of the current billing period, so a mid-month upgrade only costs you for the days you used the larger size.

Removing resources

Deleting a service or database removes its line item from the next invoice. You are not charged for resources that have already been removed by the time the period closes.

Payment

Billing is handled through Stripe. You can manage your payment method, view invoices, and download VAT receipts in Settings → Billing in your dashboard. We accept all major credit and debit cards.

Cancellation

Cancel anytime by removing all paid resources from your team — the next invoice is €0 and Stripe closes the subscription. You can also remove your card entirely from the Stripe Customer Portal; existing paid resources keep running until you delete them.

Troubleshooting