Costs & billing

Money is the question everyone has, so let's be clear about it. The short version: The Deployer builds real resources in your own cloud account, and your cloud provider bills you directly for them — not us. Here's exactly how it works and how to keep the bill small.

You pay your cloud provider directly

When you deploy, The Deployer creates real, billable resources — servers, storage, databases, and so on — inside your own cloud account. That means your cloud provider bills you directly for what's running. The Deployer never charges you for the resources and never sits between you and your provider's invoice; you're using capacity you rented in your own name.

The estimate is a guide, not the bill

Before and during a deploy, The Deployer shows a cost estimate with a breakdown of the pieces (for example, the server size and any add-ons). This is there to help you plan — but it's an estimate, not a spending cap. The Deployer doesn't stop or limit spending in your account. Your real charges come from your cloud provider and depend on actual usage, your region, data transfer, and your provider's current prices. Always treat the in-app number as a ballpark, and check your provider's own billing dashboard for the exact amount.

What can make the bill higher than the estimate

• Data transfer (egress). Traffic leaving the cloud is billed per GB and grows with your visitors.
• Autoscaling. Architectures that scale out (containers, serverless, Kubernetes) add capacity, and cost, under load.
• Log ingestion and retention. Provider logging and monitoring services bill for the volume they ingest and keep.
• NAT gateways and networking. NAT gateways, load balancers and static IPs have hourly charges plus per-GB processing.
• Managed databases and caches. Their price depends on instance size, storage, backups and I/O, and is often the largest line.

Budgets are alerts, not caps

AWS Budgets, Google Cloud budgets, Azure cost alerts and DigitalOcean billing alerts notify you when spending crosses a threshold. They don't stop spending. Set one up in your provider's billing console as an early warning, and set the threshold below what you're willing to pay.

Deleting a project stops the charges

Because the charges come from running resources, the way to stop paying is to remove them. Deleting a project tears down the resources it created, which is how you avoid paying for something you no longer use. If you spun up a project to try things out and you're done with it, delete it so it isn't quietly costing you money.

The Deployer's own plans

Your cloud bill and your Deployer plan are separate. A plan changes what the platform does for you, never what is already running:

• Free: one deployed project at its provider address, manual redeploys, and one automated recovery session per deployment. Scans, verdicts and priced architectures are unlimited.
• Pro: up to five deployed projects, two seats (you and one teammate), custom domains with HTTPS, push-to-deploy, extended automated recovery, and uptime and deploy alerts.
• Team: everything in Pro for up to fifteen deployed projects and ten seats, with priority support. See working with your team.

A repository with several services, such as a website and an API, is deployed as one project per service. Projects from the same repository and branch count as one deployed project.

Current prices are on the Plans & Billing page. If you stop paying, your apps keep running in your own cloud account and your account moves to the Free plan. Cancelling a plan doesn't delete any cloud resources, so they keep billing in your provider account until you delete the project or remove them yourself.

Tips to keep costs low

• Start small. Choose a smaller server size to begin with — you can always scale up later if the app needs it. Small sizes are dramatically cheaper.
• Delete projects you're not using. An idle deploy still bills. Tearing it down is the single most effective way to cut costs.
• Keep an eye on the Cost card. Check the estimate before you launch, and re-check it when you change sizes or add services.
• Mind your provider's own pricing. Things like data transfer (traffic leaving the cloud) and managed databases add up. Your provider's billing page shows where the money actually goes.

Ready to deploy

The quick start walks you through a full deployment, and cloud provider limits & quotas covers the account rules that can affect it.

Paying in rupees

In India, Pro and Team can be paid in rupees by UPI or card. Choose INR (UPI) above the plans. The rupee price includes 18% GST. A plan you already pay for in dollars renews in dollars until its term ends; after that you can switch.

Partner codes

If a creator or agency gave you a code, type it at checkout. It takes its discount off your first purchase, a plan or a done-for-you order. If you signed up through their link, the discount is already applied.