> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.anonalabs.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Plans and billing

> What each plan includes, how credits are consumed, and how to upgrade, change or cancel a subscription.

Every organization starts on **Free**. Upgrading is self-serve from the dashboard and
takes effect as soon as payment completes. Anona holds the Stripe relationship, so you
never handle Stripe keys, and card details never touch our servers. Payment happens on
Stripe's own checkout page.

## Plans

| Plan         | Price      | Credits / month | Rate limit  | Spaces    |
| ------------ | ---------- | --------------- | ----------- | --------- |
| **Free**     | \$0        | 500             | 10 / min    | 1         |
| **Starter**  | \$9 / mo   | 6,000           | 30 / min    | 3         |
| **Pro**      | \$49 / mo  | 40,000          | 150 / min   | 20        |
| **Business** | \$99 / mo  | 200,000         | 500 / min   | 100       |
| **Scale**    | \$499 / mo | 1,500,000       | 2,000 / min | Unlimited |

## When credits refresh

Your credits refresh on **your own billing date**, not on the 1st of the calendar month.

* On a **paid plan**, that is the day Stripe bills you. Subscribe on the 20th and your
  credits refresh on the 20th, so the month you pay for and the month of credits you
  receive are the same month.
* On **Free**, there is no subscription to follow, so the period runs from the day you
  signed up and refreshes on that day each month.
* If a month is too short for your date (the 31st, in February), the refresh happens on
  the last day of that month.

The exact date is on the billing page in the dashboard ("Credits renew on…"), and in
`credits_reset_at` from `GET /v1/billing`.

Unused credits **do not roll over from month to month**. They do carry when you upgrade.
See below.

## What consumes a credit

Operations cost different amounts, because they cost us different amounts:

| Operation    | Credits | Endpoints                                              |
| ------------ | ------- | ------------------------------------------------------ |
| Add a memory | 2       | `POST /v1/record`, `/v1/record/batch`, document upload |
| Search       | 1       | `POST /v1/retrieve`                                    |
| Insight      | 5       | `POST /v1/reason`, mental-model create and refresh     |

Reads that do not involve the recall pipeline (listing spaces, fetching a memory by id,
reading your billing status) are free.

`GET /v1/billing` shows your usage for the month so far, broken down by operation type.

<Note>
  The `line_items` in that response are **credit** accounting, not money. What you are
  charged is the flat monthly plan price, which comes from Stripe.
</Note>

## Upgrading

<Steps>
  <Step title="Open Billing">
    In the dashboard, go to **Billing**. Each plan you can move to shows an
    **Upgrade** button.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Review the breakdown">
    You will see exactly what you are buying (price, credits, rate limit and space
    allowance) before anything is charged. Opening this makes no charge and no
    commitment.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Pay">
    **Pay now** takes you to Stripe's checkout page. Card details are entered there,
    on Stripe's domain, and are never sent to or stored by Anona.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Return">
    You come back to the billing page, which confirms the payment and shows your new
    limits.
  </Step>
</Steps>

### Your unused credits come with you

When you move from one paid plan to a larger one, whatever you have not spent this period
is **added on top** of the new plan's allowance. On Starter with 4,000 of your 6,000
credits left, upgrading to Pro gives you 44,000 to spend: Pro's 40,000 plus the 4,000 you
had already paid for.

The bonus covers the current period only. At your next refresh you are back to the new
plan's normal allowance (40,000, in that example).

<Note>
  Upgrading **from Free** carries nothing across. Free credits are not something you paid
  for, so a Free organization moving to Pro gets Pro's 40,000, not 40,000 plus whatever was
  left of the free allowance.
</Note>

**Once per period.** If you upgrade more than once before your next refresh (Starter to
Pro, then Pro to Business), the carry-over applies to the first of those moves. The later
upgrade still takes effect immediately, and you still get the larger plan's full
allowance; you just do not collect a second bonus on top of the first. It resets with
everything else at your next refresh date.

**Closing the tab mid-checkout is safe.** Your plan changes when Stripe confirms the
payment to us directly, server to server, not when your browser returns. If you close
the page after paying, the upgrade still applies. If you close it *before* paying,
nothing is charged and nothing changes.

If the confirmation says your plan is still updating, that is normal: Stripe's
confirmation occasionally arrives a moment after you do. Refresh shortly and it will be
there.

## Changing or cancelling

Once you are on a paid plan, **Manage billing** opens the Stripe Customer Portal, where
you can:

* switch to a different paid plan, and Stripe prorates the difference
* update the card on file
* download past invoices
* cancel the subscription

**Upgrades and downgrades are deliberately not symmetric:**

| Change                          | When it takes effect                        | Credits                                        |
| ------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------- |
| **Upgrade** to a larger plan    | Immediately                                 | New allowance, plus whatever you had not spent |
| **Downgrade** to a smaller plan | End of the period you have already paid for | Smaller plan's allowance, from that date       |
| **Cancel**                      | End of the period you have already paid for | Free allowance, from that date                 |

You paid for the bigger plan through the end of the current period, so you keep it and its
limits until then. A downgrade is scheduled rather than applied on the spot, and the
smaller plan starts at your next billing date. Cancelling behaves the same way, and the
organization returns to Free afterwards.

To move from a paid plan back to Free, cancel in the portal rather than calling the API.
`POST /v1/billing/upgrade` refuses a downgrade while a subscription is live, so that you
cannot lose your limits while Stripe is still billing you.

## If a payment fails

A declined card **does not** immediately downgrade you. Stripe retries automatically over
roughly three weeks, and we email you to update the card. Your plan and limits stay
exactly as they are throughout.

Only if every retry fails does Stripe cancel the subscription, at which point the
organization returns to Free.

## Receipts

Stripe emails the official receipt and invoice for every payment, to the address on the
card. Anona separately emails a confirmation of what changed (your new plan and limits)
to both the card address and the organization owner. When those are the same address, you
get one of each, not two.

## Limits when you run out

Running out of credits does not delete anything. Metered operations return
`429 credits_exhausted` until your credits refresh on your billing date, or until you
upgrade. Upgrading raises the limit immediately, and brings your unused credits with it.

The rate limit is separate and per-minute: exceeding it returns `429 rate_limited` and is
worth retrying with backoff rather than treating as a failure.

<Card title="Billing API reference" icon="credit-card" href="/api-reference/billing">
  Endpoint-level detail for viewing status, starting checkout, and opening the portal.
</Card>