Billing model

Aether bills two different ways depending on what you’re running. This page describes the model and structure. For current prices and your invoices, see the Billing page in the portal.

Flat monthly: fixed pools and the control plane

Your cluster’s control plane and any fixed pools (where minimum node count equals maximum) bill a flat monthly fee:

• Billed for the full calendar month — there is no proration.
• The amount is locked when first seen in a given month.
• The charge applies even if you delete the resource mid-month.

In other words, a fixed pool or a control plane that exists at any point during a month is billed for that whole month. This makes the cost of steady-state infrastructure predictable.

Hourly per node: autoscaling pools

Autoscaling pools (where maximum node count is greater than the minimum) bill hourly, per node, because their size changes with demand:

• A node that lives under 15 minutes is free — short-lived nodes from rapid scaling don’t cost you.
• At 15 minutes or more, each started hour is rounded up and billed per node.

So a node alive for 70 minutes bills 2 hours; a node alive for 10 minutes bills nothing.

How the portal presents it

The portal’s Billing page separates the two clearly:

• Monthly Subscriptions — the flat monthly charges for your fixed pools and control planes.
• Autoscaling Usage — the hourly, per-node charges from your autoscaling pools.
• Invoices — your billed history.

Tip

Choose fixed pools for predictable, steady workloads (flat monthly cost) and autoscaling pools for bursty workloads where you only want to pay for the nodes you actually use (hourly). See the Node-pool model.

Note

Current prices are shown in the portal’s Billing page — they aren’t listed here so the docs never go stale.