Billing, top-ups, and vouchers

DeskBoot bills in USD by the second. Your balance ticks down continuously while a session is running, ticks down slowly while it's stopped (EBS volume retention), and stops moving when you terminate the session.

Per-second meter

• Starter: $0.05/hr ≈ $0.0000139/sec
• Standard: $0.09/hr ≈ $0.000025/sec
• Performance: $0.18/hr ≈ $0.00005/sec
• Pro: $0.38/hr ≈ $0.000106/sec
• Windows surcharge: +$0.04/hr on every Windows instance — Microsoft licensing fee, passed through unchanged
• Stopped instance: ~$0.08/GB/month on the EBS volume only

Free $5 trial credit

We add $5 of trial credit when you verify your phone, once per account. No card needed. That's about 100 hours of Starter compute, or 55 hours of Standard: enough to actually test the product before you spend any of your own money.

Trial limits until you add a card or top up: Starter or Standard sizes, one session at a time, no static IPs or Reserved plans. Unused trial credit expires after 14 days. We email you at $2 and again at $0.50 left; at $0 your session stops, and stopped sessions are deleted after 3 days unless you add funds.

Topping up

Billing dashboard → "Top up your balance". Type any USD amount (minimum $5, maximum $500 per top-up) and choose:

• Saved card (instant). Charges your default card via Paystack, credits your balance within seconds.
• Other way (Paystack checkout). Opens Paystack's payment page where Kenyan customers can pick M-Pesa, bank transfer, USSD, or another card. Funds appear within minutes.

Auto top-up

Settings → Auto top-up. Define a threshold (default $2) and an amount (default $10). When your balance drops below the threshold, we charge your default card the top-up amount automatically. This stops running sessions from auto-stopping at $0.

Disable it any time. We email you a receipt for every auto top-up.

Vouchers

We hand out DBOOT-XXXX-YYYY codes during beta and to event attendees. Paste the code on the Billing page and your balance updates immediately. Vouchers require a verified phone and a card on file.

Each voucher redeems once. Already-used or expired codes return a clear error.

Currency display

The ledger is USD internally. If you live somewhere we support locally (currently Kenya), Settings → Display currency lets you see balances and charges in KES alongside USD, and unlocks local payment channels at checkout.

Low-balance behavior

We email you when balance crosses below your auto top-up threshold. If you have auto top-up on, we charge your card right after sending the email. If you don't, and your balance hits $0 while sessions are running, we auto-stop them and email you the list. They sit in STOPPED state until you top up — no compute charges accrue, just EBS storage.