Phala Cloud Billing

Welcome to our billing guide! We've designed this to make understanding your costs as easy as possible.

How We Calculate Your Usage

We bill you only for the actual time your CVMs run:

  • We track when your CVM turns on or off
  • You pay exactly for the seconds your CVM is running
  • You can see your running time at any moment
  • When you stop a CVM, we bill any remaining usage right away
  • Your cost depends on the size of your CVM (vCPU, memory, storage)

You don't pay for:

  • Time spent pulling images when first setting up
  • CVMs that fail to start
  • Any time when your CVMs are turned off
  • Storage for stopped CVMs (current policy)

CVM Credits and Balance

Your account has two types of funds:

  • CVM Credits: Free credits given by us ($20 when you verify)
  • Balance: Money you add to your account

How they work:

  • Credits never expire
  • Credits work only for CVM usage (not for Confidential AI)
  • We use your free credits first, then your balance
  • You can get a refund for unused balance by emailing us from your registered email
  • If you run out of funds, you'll see overdue charges

When Your Account Goes Overdue

If your balance runs low:

  • We'll email you right away
  • Your CVMs will keep running for 14 days
  • After 14 days, we'll stop your CVMs
  • We keep your data for 3 months

Payment Options

We offer several ways to pay:

  • Credit Card: Pay through Stripe
  • Cryptocurrency: Pay through Coinbase using any ERC20 token on Base chain that can swap to USDC (Coinbase charges transaction fees)
  • Wire Transfer: Available for business accounts with annual contracts

About Credit Card Verification

We verify your identity through a temporary credit card charge:

  • We temporarily authorize a $1 charge during verification
  • The $1 charge will be automatically refunded within 7 business days
  • This verifies the card is valid and active
  • This verification helps prevent fraud and abuse
  • After successful verification, you can add funds at your convenience

Enterprise Options

For larger teams, we offer:

  • Annual billing
  • Volume discounts
  • Custom payment terms
  • Detailed reports

Email us at cloud@phala.network for enterprise options or if you have questions about unexpected charges.

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