Free Tier Usage

Catalyst enables a free tier usage for all existing users, and for all new users when they sign up, if they have opted for the pay-as-you go pricing model. The free tier usage allowance offers resources in various Catalyst services for free of cost per month, based on a set of hard limits defined for each.

For example, Catalyst offers 25k GB-seconds of Serverless Function requests, 2 GB storage in the Data Store, 1000 GET requests in Cache, and more for free per month. You can refer to the Free Tier page page for a list of the full set of resources and operations available in the free tier.

Important Points to Remember

• The free tier allowance is only available with the pay-as-you-go pricing model. For the subscription model, an additional USD 5 per month will be added to your selected plan. For example, if you choose the Basic plan at USD 25/month, you’ll receive a total of USD 30/month, with Catalyst providing the extra USD 5.

• The free tier usage allowance is refreshed monthly, and is not just a one-time benefit. The counter is refreshed after every bill payment in the monthly cycle in the case of the pay-as-you-go model, or the subscription fee payment in the case of the subscription model. You will be prompted to set up your Catalyst payment method as soon as any resource’s free tier allowance is about to expire in the case of pay-as-you-go model.

• The resources provided in the free tier allowance spans across all organizations and projects you create in Catalyst and is not specific to one project. That is, Catalyst offers 25k GB-seconds of Serverless Function requests in the free tier for your Catalyst account overall, irrespective of any number of organizations or projects you might create.

• If you opt for the pay-as-you-go pricing model, you can continue to stay within the hard limits of the resource utilization each month and potentially avail resources for free of cost in an unlimited manner. An amount worth the value of the free tier allowance of each billable operation is subtracted from the overall usage of that resource to obtain the billed value during the final billing.

Exceeding Free Tier Allowance

The hard limits of the free tier allowance for resource utilization are defined for the entire Catalyst account overall, and not for individual projects or organizations. For example, the hard limit of 5k insertions in the Data Store in the free tier is applicable across all projects in all orgs in your account overall, and not for a single project. The limits can be split across multiple projects in any manner, as the usage is measured in a consolidated way.

If you cross the hard limit defined for a specific resource in the free tier for your Catalyst account overall, you are out of the free tier for that resource alone, and you will be obligated to pay for its usage beyond that limit. Catalyst will consider the free tier allowance of only that resource as expired in this case, and not the other resources.

Example:

Assume the hard limits for data insertion is 5k and function execution is 25k. If you cross the limit for data insertions, your billing of data insertions will start from the 5001st insertion. However, if you have only used 10k function executions, you can continue to use Functions in the free tier until you cross the limit.

Free Tier Expiration

All Catalyst users can easily track the status of their free tier usage availability based on their resource utilization from the Billing section in Settings.

If you are a new user who has never set up their Catalyst payment method before, you will find a prompt in your console’s header, displaying one of the three statuses for your Catalyst account:

Free Tier

This is shown when your usage is still under the free tier allowance for all billable resources and operations.

Free Tier Partially Expired

This is shown when the hard limits set for one or more of the resources in the free tier have been used up. That is, when the free tier expires for one or more resources.

Free Tier Expired

This is shown when the hard limits set for all the resources in the free tier have been fully consumed. This state indicates the complete expiration of the free tier.

In all three cases, the console displays the usage details of all resources when you click the prompt in a pop-up window. You can find the details of the resources that are no longer in the free tier.

You can then click on Continue to select plan to select a payment model and set up your payment method in order to continue using the expired resources, which will now be billable.