Resource-based pricing

Resource-based pricing charges a monthly package fee plus your usage of messages, channel minutes and connection minutes. It applies to accounts that signed up before Ably moved to MAU pricing and have not yet migrated. New accounts are priced on MAUs.

Packages

Resource-based pricing has four packages. Each has a monthly base package price, which is the same regardless of your usage:

Each package includes the following limits on the key units of consumption:

Features and support

All packages include Google and GitHub SSO. In addition:

• The Standard package includes a 30-day trial of Datadog Lite, and support via email with a Service Level Agreement (SLA) of less than 1 business day for general guidance and for system impediments or system down.
• The Pro package includes Datadog Lite, and support via email with an SLA of less than 1 business day for general guidance and less than 4 business hours for system impediments or system down.
• The Free package includes Ably's best effort Service Level Objective (SLO) and access to community support, including Discord and Stack Overflow.
• Enterprise packages include enhanced SLAs and a Customer Success Manager. Contact us to discuss an Enterprise package.

Costs

Ably charges based on three units of consumption under resource-based pricing:

[*] Channels are created on demand when clients attach to them. They remain active until there are no more realtime clients attached, approximately one minute has passed since the last client detached, and approximately one minute has passed since the last message was published to the channel.

Minutes are the smallest unit that Ably bills against, and they are rounded up. If a connection was open for 10.01 minutes then this is billed as 11 minutes of usage.

Message cost

Messages are charged at $2.50 per million messages consumed.

Depending on volume, rates can go as low as $0.50 per million messages.

Channel minutes cost

Channels are charged at $1.00 for every million minutes of activity.

Depending on volume, rates can go as low as $0.20 per million minutes.

Connection minutes cost

Connections are charged at $1.00 for every million minutes of activity.

Depending on volume, rates can go as low as $0.20 per million minutes.

Bandwidth

There is also a charge on additional bandwidth consumed.

This is worked out based on the average message size of 5KiB multiplied by the number of messages consumed in the month. If your total bandwidth for the month is less than this value then there is no charge for bandwidth. Anything over this value is charged at $0.25 per GiB.

Billing

Your monthly bills are calculated based on the base package fee, plus your usage for that month.

Usage is calculated on the last day of the month and invoices are issued in arrears on the 1st of the following month. They include:

• Your base package price.
• Your consumption of messages, and channel and connection minutes used in the previous month.

Billing details, invoices and billing alerts are managed in the same way as for MAU pricing. When you create a billing alert on a resource-based package, enter a dollar amount greater than your base package fee as the spending threshold.

Upgrades

To upgrade your account from a Free package to a Standard or Pro package, or from a Standard package to a Pro package:

1. Ensure you are the account owner.
2. Log in to your account and select Billing from the Account menu.
3. Choose the package you wish to upgrade to and follow the instructions. Upgrades take effect immediately.

The base package price is charged pro-rata from the point in the month that you upgraded. If you are upgrading from a Standard package to a Pro package, this is true for both base package prices.

Your first invoice is issued at the start of the following calendar month. It covers your usage from the point of upgrade up until the end of that month. All subsequent invoices follow the same pattern of billing for the previous month's usage.

Once you upgrade from a Free package, your usage is counted from that point onwards. For example, if you upgrade in the middle of the month, you are charged for the first message you send after upgrading, not after the 6,000,000 messages allowed on the Free package.

To upgrade to an Enterprise package, contact us to discuss your options.

Downgrades

To downgrade your account to a Standard or Free package:

1. Ensure you are the account owner.
2. Log in to your account and select Billing from the Account menu.
3. Click the Downgrade button.

Package downgrades take effect on the 1st of the following month. You remain on your current package, with its limits and benefits, until the end of your billing cycle. At the start of the following month, you receive a final invoice that includes the full package fee and any usage for the previous month.

Limits

Limits exist to minimize the impact on service due to accidental or deliberate abuse of your applications, and to provide a level of protection on your consumption costs if abuse does occur. The limits for resource-based packages differ from those for MAU packages. See resource-based limits for the full list.

Cost optimization

Messages are usually the largest part of a resource-based bill. The biggest reduction comes from server-side batching, where each batch delivered to a subscriber counts as a single message. Each product's pricing page describes the operations that generate messages and how to reduce them:

• Pub/Sub
• Chat
• Spaces
• LiveObjects
• LiveSync
• AI Transport

Close connections and detach from channels when they are no longer needed, as connection and channel minutes accrue regardless of activity.

Close your account

You can close your account at any time by first downgrading to the Free package.