Billing FAQ

The answers below cover the questions support sees most often about how Driftstack billing works.

How does the free tier work?

Every new account starts on the Free tier: a perpetual evaluation tier capped at 1 concurrent session and 1 profile, with sessions up to 20 minutes each, launched and driven through the desktop app. Choose browser sign-in and the app stores a restricted ds_test_… device credential automatically; it is not a customer API key or a general sandbox key. Programmatic API/SDK access, OAuth approval, and ds_live_… customer API keys require a paid tier, including the Manual tiers. Free dashboard sessions can list and revoke keys retained from before a downgrade, but cannot create or rotate them; ordinary keys and OAuth tokens remain paused while the account is Free. No card is required, Free never expires, and there are no usage charges, prepaid credits, or automatic charges. Upgrade when you need code access, higher limits, more profiles, or longer sessions.

How does upgrading to a paid tier work?

Visit /pricing and pick a tier. You can pay with a credit/debit card (Stripe Checkout) or with crypto (NowPayments — BTC, ETH, USDC, USDT, and more). The upgrade applies immediately on payment confirmation; the new fixed subscription price and entitlement limits apply from that point. Browser session-hours, API calls, and page navigations do not create usage overages.

What about proration on upgrades / downgrades?

Upgrades are prorated by Stripe: you pay the pro-rata difference for the remainder of the current billing cycle, then the new full price from the next cycle. Crypto upgrades (NowPayments) charge the full new tier price and reset the billing cycle to the upgrade date — crypto is pay-as-you-go-style because we cannot guarantee in-cycle reconciliation against an on-chain payment.

Downgrades take effect at the end of the current cycle (you keep the higher tier until then). No refund is issued for the unused portion of the higher tier.

Can I get a refund?

Card payments: full refund within 14 days of payment if you haven't run sessions beyond a brief evaluation. Past the 14-day window we do not refund unless the issue is on our side (extended outage, billing error).

Crypto payments: non-refundable. Once a crypto payment settles on-chain it is committed for the billing period it covers. You can cancel anytime — cancellation stops future billing periods — but the current period is not refunded. If a failed-delivery scenario occurs (you paid but the entitlement didn't unlock), we re-provision the entitlement; we don't send the crypto back.

Why do crypto payments take longer to confirm?

Crypto payments are subject to on-chain confirmation latency. Most BTC payments take 10-30 minutes; USDC/USDT on Polygon or BSC typically settle in 1-5 minutes. Until NowPayments reports finished, the order is in confirming state and the tier change is not applied. The team admin dashboard shows the order state live; you'll also get an email confirmation when the payment lands.

What if I send the wrong amount in crypto?

• Underpayment: the order transitions to partial and stays there. Support reaches out to arrange a top-up (send the difference to the same address) or a tier downgrade.
• Overpayment: the order completes as paid and the entitlement is granted in full. Driftstack does not keep an account-credit balance, so the surplus is not carried forward automatically — contact support and we will sort it out.
• Wrong currency / network: contact support — recovery depends on the chain. We can usually recover ETH and USDC sent to the wrong address; we cannot recover BTC sent to a Lightning address or vice versa.

How do I see what I've been billed?

Stripe's Customer Portal and Stripe-issued invoices are the source of truth for card subscription charges. Crypto customers use the NowPayments order receipt for the amount paid. The dashboard's operational cost estimate is a unit-economics view, not an invoice: it does not itemize sessions, recordings, storage, egress, email, or LLM as customer charges. Bundled LLM's separate settings view shows its included-service monthly budget.

How do tax / VAT work?

Stripe handles VAT on card payments automatically — EU + UK customers see VAT added at checkout based on their billing country. Crypto payments are quoted VAT-exclusive; VAT for EU/UK customers is invoiced separately in EUR after the crypto payment confirms (you'll receive a follow-up payment link for the VAT amount). B2B customers can provide a VAT number on /docs/teams for reverse-charge invoicing.

What happens at the end of a billing cycle?

Stripe customers are auto-renewed; the new cycle starts the moment the renewal payment confirms. Crypto is not a subscription — a payment buys a single 31-day entitlement, and there is no auto-renew and no renewal reminder today. Buying again before the current one expires stacks: the new 31 days start from the existing expiry rather than from the payment. When an entitlement expires the account moves to whatever entitlement it still holds, or to the Free tier if none remains. That happens within about 15 minutes of expiry — there is no grace period, so buy the next term before the current one runs out.

Cancel anytime

Cancellation is available via the dashboard at any time — no retention friction. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current cycle; the account continues to function fully until then. The account then moves to the Free tier automatically. Cancellation itself does not schedule a data purge: the account and profiles remain, Free-tier capacity and API restrictions apply, and recordings saved by the desktop app stay on that device. You can resubscribe at any time.

Support

Billing-specific questions: billing@driftstack.dev. For payment-stuck-in-pending issues, include the order_id from the checkout-confirmation email so we can look up the NowPayments status.