---
title: "Is my usage in the Catalyst Development environment billed, or only usage in Production?"
url: https://docs.catalyst.zoho.com/en/faq/billing/development-environment-billing/
description: "Under the current pay-as-you-go and subscription models, usage in both the Development and the Production environment counts toward your free tier allowance, …"
last_updated: 2026-11-13T05:00:22Z
service: All Services
type: faq
---

Under the current pay-as-you-go and subscription models, usage in both the Development and the Production environment counts toward your free tier allowance, your plan amount and your bill. The Development environment is free only within the shared free tier: once you go past it, Development usage is billed like Production usage, and a project that exists only in Development can carry the pay-as-you-go minimum. Catalyst's deprecated pricing system, which applied until 1 April 2024, billed only the Production environment.

To keep Development costs down:
1. Go to **Settings** → **Billing** → **Breakdown** → **Project Usage Stats** to see which projects use the most.
2. Stop test workloads you no longer need, such as scripts or scheduled jobs that keep calling your functions or Data Store.
3. Delete projects you don't use: open the project, go to **Settings** → **General** under Project Settings, click the ellipsis icon, click **Delete Project**, type DELETE and click **Confirm**.

Refer to the [Pay-As-You-Go Pricing Model help page](https://docs.catalyst.zoho.com/en/deployment-and-billing/billing/pay-as-you-go-model/) and the [Deprecated Pricing System help page](https://docs.catalyst.zoho.com/en/deployment-and-billing/billing/old-pricing-model/) for details.