Billing lifecycle
Trials, upgrades, downgrades, cancellation and what each one does to your Ink — the rule is that Ink follows money, immediately on an upgrade and at renewal on a downgrade.
One rule explains every case: Ink follows money. If you pay more now, the Ink arrives now. If you pay less later, the Ink you already paid for stays until the cycle you paid for ends.
| What you do | What you’re charged | What happens to Ink |
|---|---|---|
| Start a trial | Nothing for 14 days | The full plan’s Ink, expiring when the trial does |
| First payment | The plan price | The full cycle’s grant |
| Upgrade — bigger plan, longer cadence, more seats | Prorated, charged now | Topped up to the bigger plan’s amount immediately |
| Downgrade — smaller plan, fewer seats | Nothing now; takes effect at the next billing date | Nothing changes until renewal — the plan you paid for runs out its cycle |
| Renewal | The plan price | A fresh grant; unused grant Ink does not roll over |
| Cancel | Nothing further | The plan runs to the end of the paid cycle, then the organization is unsubscribed |
Why downgrades wait
A downgrade is scheduled, not immediate: you paid for this cycle, so you keep this cycle. The dashboard shows a pending downgrade as a banner with the date it lands, and choosing your current plan again is the undo — the scheduled change is simply cancelled.
Trials
Every plan starts with a 14-day trial and the trial grants the plan’s full Ink, so the agent surface is real from day one. Trial Ink expires when the trial ends; anything you bought as a top-up never expires. Converting mid-trial to a bigger plan tops up the difference rather than granting twice.
When a payment fails
The subscription enters a past-due state with the provider’s own retry schedule. Entitlements follow the subscription’s state, so an unpaid organization eventually reads as unsubscribed — AI and agents switch off, hand-scheduled publishing does not. Fixing the payment method restores the plan without losing scheduled posts.
Reading your own billing state
The dashboard’s Settings → Billing is the human view. Agents and scripts read the same projection:
billingPlan— current plan, cadence, seats, and any scheduled changebillingInk— balance, this cycle’s grant, and expirybilling_planandbilling_inkover MCP — the same two facts, one tool per fact
Checkouts and top-ups always finish in a browser: an agent can start one and hand a URL to a person, but it never charges a card itself.