The wallet pays
A plan says what is included. A wallet you top up pays for it. A card that auto-charges is exactly the bill nobody funded, and in a mobile-money market it is the thing that fails most often.
Pricing
Prepaid, like airtime. Never a bill you didn’t fund.
You top up a wallet, your project draws on it, and when it runs out the project slows down gracefully instead of running up a debt. That is the whole idea, and it is the opposite of a card that is charged every month whether or not the money was there.
There are no prices on this page, on purpose. We are in early access and the billing system does not exist yet, so nothing is charged. We would rather tell you that than invent numbers to fill a table. The principles below are settled; the figures will be published here, with the plans, before anyone is charged.
The principles
What is already decided.
No debt, ever
When the wallet is empty a project degrades gracefully. It never goes into debt, and you never wake up to a charge you did not choose to make.
We never hold your money
Payments you collect run on your own processor accounts. We orchestrate; we are never a party to the funds, so there is nothing of yours for us to lose.
Enterprise is a conversation
For needs we have not met yet, we talk before we price. That is how we avoid pricing for a customer we haven’t understood.
The shape we are planning
Four plans, and an honest line between them.
This is a sketch of what each plan will include. Figures and exact limits come with billing. Items marked planned are not built yet.
| Free | Starter | Business | Dedicated | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Projects | One or two | Several | Many | By contract |
| Included quotas | A small shared allowance | Included in the plan | Higher | Provisioned for you |
| Storage | Shared, in our region | Plus a choice of where files live (other locations switching on) | Plus African locations, Cape Town and Johannesburg (built, switching on) | Your own bucket |
| SMS sender | Ours | Ours | Your own sender ID | Your own provider |
| Custom domain for the API | — | — | Yes (planned) | Yes (planned) |
| Database compute | Contained | Contained | Contained | Allocated: your own Postgres |
| Support | Community | Email with an uptime commitment (planned) | A conversation |
Every project is already in our nightly encrypted backup, whichever plan it ends up on. Point-in-time recovery is planned for the higher plans.
Contained, not allocated
The sentence we want you to read before you sign up.
Everything below Dedicated is contained, not allocated. Your project has its own database, its own users and its own keys, and we limit what it can consume so that one project’s bad afternoon cannot become everyone’s. But it shares the machine underneath with other projects. It does not have a server reserved for it.
A team that will eventually need a reserved server should learn that from us, in advance, rather than from an incident. That is what the Dedicated plan is for: your own Postgres, provisioned for you, priced after we have talked.
What gets metered
What the wallet will pay for.
We already measure the first four per project, per day, and you can see them today on the Usage page. The rest arrive with the features they pay for.
Requests
Every call through the API, with its status, so a spike or a runaway loop is visible, not a surprise.
Measured todayData out
The bytes your app sends to its users, called egress. We take the cost of data seriously because your users do.
Measured todayDatabase size
How large each project’s Postgres has grown.
Measured todayFile storage
What sits in your buckets.
Measured todaySMS sent
Every message costs money the moment it leaves, so this is capped before it can be abused.
With real SMSAI tokens
If and when we offer managed models. Until then you bring your own keys.
Later
Questions
Straight answers.
Is it free right now?
There is no billing system yet, so nothing is charged. Early access is invite-only while we work. We will publish prices on this page before anyone is charged.
Will you charge my card every month?
No. The model is a prepaid wallet that you top up, not a subscription that charges whether or not the money was there. Mobile-money top-ups are what we are building toward.
What currency will it be in?
Not decided. We are building for people who cannot or will not pay with a dollar card, so mobile money in local currency is the aim. We will say when it is settled.
What happens when my wallet runs out?
Your project slows down gracefully. It does not run up a debt and it does not bill you for what you did not fund. The exact limits will be published with the prices.
Do you hold my customers’ money?
Never. Payments you take run through your own processor credentials. We orchestrate and reconcile; we are not a party to the funds.
Where are my files stored?
Wherever your project says: under Storage → Settings the dashboard states “Your files are stored in” the provider and the place. Today that is our own server in the United Kingdom, or a bucket you bring yourself. Locations at Cloudflare R2, Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and Backblaze B2 are built and switch on as we connect each provider’s account; Cape Town and Johannesburg are the options for data that must stay in Africa. Managed storage at those providers will be a prepaid add-on, priced per GB-month, plus downloads where the provider charges for them. We have not set our prices yet; the dashboard shows each provider’s list price.
Can I get my own database?
Yes, as the Dedicated plan: your own Postgres, provisioned for you. It is a conversation rather than a button, so tell us what you need.
What if I outgrow it, or want to leave?
It is plain Postgres with a standard S3-style storage API, so you can take your data and go. A one-click export is not built yet; until it is, you have a standard connection string, and we will help you move.
Early access
Build now. Pay when there is something to pay for.
Nothing is charged today. When billing arrives, the prices will be here first.