The Pay-As-You-Go Pricing Model

The pay-as-you-go pricing model requires users to pay only for the resources they consume, post the consumption. This is a postpaid model in which the price is calculated for each billable resource usage, and the bill is generated on a monthly basis.

Benefits

• The pay-as-you-go model is highly cost effective and efficient, enabling you to only pay for the resources you consume. There are no overhead or subscription charges levied for any resource.

• This model saves you from implementing a trial and error method of subscribing to plans or purchasing features beforehand, when you cannot foresee your requirements in advance.

• You can avail this option if your usage is on a small scale, such as building independent projects or freelancing, or if you prefer only to pay for what you use without prior commitments.

• You can highly benefit from the free tier usage allowance if you opt for the pay-as-you-go model. If you don’t exceed the hard limits imposed for the free usage allowance of resources each month, you can utilize Catalyst for free of cost in an unlimited manner.

Billing Calculations in Pay-As-You-Go

Upon exceeding the free tier allowance, your further usage of Catalyst will be liable for payment. If you opt for the pay-as-you-go model, the Billing settings will display a breakdown of your resource utilization across all projects in an organization and their billing calculations for the final amount due. This is refreshed in each billing cycle.

Catalyst levies a minimum billing amount of USD 5. If you exceed the free tier allowance of any one resource, your due payment in the pay-as-you-go model will begin from the USD 5 mark.

Additionally, if you exceed the free tier allowance in a specific project, you will still be required to pay the minimum billing amount for all the projects that you have created in an organization. This is in addition to the due amount in the projects you exceeded the usage in.

In the projects where the free tier has been exceeded, an amount worth the value of the free tier allowance of each billable operation left is subtracted from the overall usage of that resource to obtain the billed value during the final billing.

Let’s understand this with an example.

Example:

Assume you create three projects in a Catalyst org: Project 1, Project 2, Project 3. Until you exceed the specified free tier allowances in each of these projects and you continue to operate within the hard limits of each resource, you can work with these projects for free of cost.

Now assume that you exceed the free tier allowance for a resource in Project 1, while still remaining under the free tier limits in Project 2 and Project 3 for all resources. Let the overall consumption charges of resources in these three projects be as follows:

Because the free tier allowance was exceeded in Project 1, you are billed the minimum billing amount of $5 in Project 2 and Project 3 as well. This calculation is before the free tier allowance value is subtracted from the overall usage consumption.

Now, assume the free tier allowances in these projects are worth the following amount values:

Your total amount due will then be:

$16 - $5 = $11

i.e., Total Billed Charges - Total Free Tier Allowance Left = Total Amount Due

Suppose you exceed the free tier usage in Project 2 as well for multiple resources, and your overall consumption charges come to $7 and the free tier allowance left is $0 in that project, then your total amount due will be:

[$6 + $7 + $5 ] - [$0 + $0 + $3] = $15

i.e., [Billed Charges in Project 1 + Project 2 + Project 3] - [Free Tier Allowance Left in Project 1 + Project 2 + Project 3]