Billing

Overview

All billable resources are attached to a project. At the beginning of each hour, your resources will be billed and the hourly cost will be deducted from the project owner's balance.

If your balance reach zero your services will be suspended and you won't be able to restart them until you add credits to your balance. You must have at least $5 of credits on your balance to be able to start a service.

Once your services are suspended you have only a few days to add credits to your balance before your services are deleted. Once deleted you have 14 days to restore them. In case of a restoration, you will get a new IP address.

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Invoices are created when you manually add credits to your account or automatically if you have activated the auto- refill option. Invoices only include the amount of credits added to your account.
Billing and resource utilization details are available separately in each project.

Add credits

Add money to your elestio balance

You can easily add credits to your elestio account from your User Profile.

1. Click on the User Icon to access your User Profile in the top left above the Main Navigation menu.
2. Select the Add Credits tab.
3. Enter the amount you wish to add to your account, in US dollars (USD).
4. Click the Pay Now. You will be redirected to the Stripe checkout site to complete your payment.

Funds are automatically added to your account upon successful payment. This can take up to a few minutes, but is usually instantaneous.

elestio has a $10 minimum, and a $1,000 maximum per transaction.
If you would like to add a larger amount to your account, contact our sales team and we'd be happy to talk volume discounts!

If you are a company, please fill out the company relevant fields. This helps us to determine your tax status and whether or not you need to pay VAT.

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Per project details

To view a project's billing details, select Billing from the left menu, where you'll find a recap and details of all billable items.

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Payment options

Never worry about your elestio account balance running out or being too low anymore by using our auto refill option to automatically top it up.

To Enable auto-refill.
  1. Select the Account tab from the left sidebar menu.
  2. Select the Payment Options tab.
  3. Toggle the switch to enable it.
  4. Enter the minimum balance for activation of auto-refill
  5. Enter your refill amount
  6. Save by clicking Save auto refill settings

Currently, all amounts are in US dollars (USD).


To Disable auto-refill.
  1. Select the Account tab from the left sidebar menu.
  2. Select the Payment Options tab.
  3. Toggle the switch to disable it.
  4. Save by clicking Save auto refill settings.

Auto refill is always enabled by default. To turn off Auto refill, just toggle the switch to off and save the configuration.


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Elestio has a $10 minimum, and a $1,000 maximum per transaction.
If you would like to add a larger amount, contact our sales team for volume discounts.

Invoices

Easily view, open or download your invoices in one place via your User Profile.

Navigate to your User Profile via the user icon at the top left of the Dashboard above the Main menu.
Select the Invoices tab

Invoices are generated when you add credits to your account or when your account auto-refills.


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Free trial

Elestio offers a 3-day free trial with $20 in credits, during which you can launch up to 2 services.

In addition to the services in our catalog, you have access to load balancers, volumes, and CI/CD pipelines. Domain names are the only thing that cannot be acquired with free credits.

End of the Free Trial offer

The Free Trial ends when you use all of your credit, or after 3 days, whichever happens first. At that time, the following conditions apply:


You may disable auto-refill in your payment options from the left sidebar Account tab, or you can click here to disable auto-refill.


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Any resources you create during the trial will be destroyed if your account runs out of credits. You may add credit using the add credit tab of the Account tab on the left sidebar, or by clicking here to add credits.


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SEPA Direct Debit Payment Option on Elestio

At Elestio, we aim to make payment processing as convenient and accessible as possible for our customers. We’re pleased to offer SEPA Direct Debit as a payment option, available to our eligible European customers. This method ensures a secure, easy, and efficient way to manage payments directly from your bank account, adhering to European Union standards.

Eligibility Criteria for SEPA Direct Debit

To maintain secure and streamlined transactions, SEPA Direct Debit is available under the following eligibility criteria:

If you meet the eligibility criteria and are interested in setting up SEPA Direct Debit, you can do it in the Add Credits tab. Once enabled, SEPA will be your new secure and convenient method for managing payments on Elestio.

Bandwidth Billing

At Elestio, we're committed to transparency and simplicity when it comes to billing. One area where we often receive questions is bandwidth usage, especially what happens after your allocated free bandwidth is exceeded. This post will walk you through how bandwidth billing works on Elestio, depending on the cloud provider and region you're using.

🔍 Understanding Bandwidth Allocation

Every Elestio service comes with a generous amount of free bandwidth included in your service plan. This is usually sufficient for most typical workloads. However, if your usage exceeds this free allocation, additional bandwidth usage will be billed separately based on your cloud provider and region.

💰 Bandwidth Pricing Breakdown

Here's how we calculate bandwidth charges after you exceed the free allocation:

✅ Hetzner (Except Singapore Region)
✅ DigitalOcean (All Regions)
✅ NetCup(All Regions)
⚠️ Hetzner (Singapore Region)
🌍 All Other Providers

📊 How to Monitor Your Bandwidth Usage

You can track your bandwidth usage easily via the Elestio dashboard:

  1. Log in to your Elestio account.

  2. Navigate to your service details.

  3. Check the Bandwidth Usage section to view current usage and free limits.

🧠 Why the Difference in Pricing?

Different cloud providers and regions have different network costs. For example:

Our goal is to always keep pricing fair, transparent, and aligned with actual costs.

📩 Questions?

If you have any questions about your bandwidth usage or billing, feel free to reach out to support@elest.io —we’re here to help!

Elestio Free Trial Policy & Fair Use Statement

At Elestio, we’re committed to empowering users by providing a fast, reliable and flexible platform for deploying services. As part of this commitment, we offer a 3-day free trial including $20 in credits, allowing new users to try up to 2 services at no cost.

In addition to the services in our catalog, you have access to load balancers, volumes, and CI/CD pipelines. Domain names are the only thing that cannot be acquired with free credits.

To ensure the sustainability and security of this program, Elestio enforces certain eligibility requirements which may include identity verification.

Free Trial Eligibility and Abuse Prevention

The Elestio free trial is not a right or entitlement but a voluntary offer made by Elestio for genuine new users looking to evaluate the Elestio platform. We reserve the full right to deny or revoke trial access to any user who does not meet our eligibility criteria or who is found to be using false, misleading, or unverifiable information in cases including, but not limited to:

KYC (Know Your Customer) Verification

In situations where account information is flagged by our risk management system as warranting further enquiry, Elestio may require identity verification (KYC) before allowing continued access to the platform or approval of a free trial.

This process may include submitting a government-issued photo ID to confirm the user's identity. If a customer refuses or fails to complete the requested identity verification, we reserve the right to deny free trial access and/or suspend the account. 

Geographic & Abuse-Related Restrictions

While Elestio aims to provide fair global access, where our risk assessment systems identify disproportionately high numbers of requests that breach our eligibility criteria or Terms of Service from certain regions and IP ranges, we may temporarily restrict free trial access to accounts from regions or networks. These restrictions are based solely on risk patterns and abuse metrics and are regularly reviewed for accuracy. While unfortunately this can result in increased due diligence checks for legitimate customers from such regions or networks, the precaution is essential to protect all users and maintain platform integrity.

If you believe your access was wrongly restricted, please reach out to support@elest.io for manual review.

Final Note: Discretion to Deny Trial Access

Elestio retains full discretion to deny or revoke free trial access to any customer.

The free trial is a goodwill offering intended for evaluation purposes by legitimate users. It is not an entitlement, and its availability is subject to verification, compliance with platform rules and Elestio's discretion.

Elestio is not responsible for any legal, commercial, operational or reputational consequences of denying trial access.

We're Here to Help

We understand that false positives can occur, and we remain committed to fair access. If your account has been affected and you believe it to be an error, please contact us with your details for review.

We appreciate your understanding as we work to maintain a secure, abuse-free environment for all developers and teams.