Credits and billing
Credit vs. metered billing, what uses credits, and where to watch usage.
Billing is SaaS-only — self-install deployments never see any of it. On SaaS, every organization is in one of three billing modes, and which one you're in changes what the app shows and what it lets you do.
The three billing modes
| Mode | Who's in it | What it looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Credit | New SaaS signups, on starter (trial) credits. | A credit balance, usage that deducts in dollars, and an upgrade prompt when it runs low. |
| Metered | Customers on usage-based billing through Stripe. | Stripe handles the payment method and invoicing. |
| None | Orgs without billing enabled. | No billing UI at all. |
Find your org's billing under Billing & Subscription in the org's admin sidebar. That nav item only appears once metered billing is enabled for the deployment — if your deployment doesn't run metered billing, you won't see it, and that's expected.
What uses credits
The app meters usage by activity, not by a single flat "compute" line. The real meters are:
| Meter | What it measures |
|---|---|
| Pipeline Runtime | Per-minute time your pipelines spend running. |
| Automation Runtime | Per-minute time your automations spend running. |
| Compute (X-Small → X-Large) | Cluster compute, priced by the size tier you run. |
| AI Tokens | Tokens consumed by LLM calls across the product. |
| Databasin One Input / Output Tokens | Tokens the agent reads and writes during a conversation. |
| Storage | Managed lakehouse storage, per GB-month. |
A couple of things sit outside this meter set as a matter of policy: Databricks compute is billed by Databricks directly (Databasin orchestrates the queries but doesn't meter them), and DuckDB's single-node footprint is light enough that it's rarely the thing moving your balance.
The app shows you how much you've used — quantities per meter, plus the dollar amount deducted in credit mode — but it does not show the per-unit price list. Those published rates live in Stripe and on the public pricing page, not inside the product.
The credits-exhausted experience
When a credit-mode org's balance hits zero, Databasin throws up a full-screen, non-dismissible overlay titled Credits Exhausted. It covers the whole UI on purpose — deep links into Databasin One, published dashboards, and admin pages all land on it — so nothing keeps running up a negative balance.
The overlay shows:
- Credits Used against your total, as a balance bar.
- A fixed message that you have 24 hours to upgrade before the account is disabled. It's a static notice, not a live countdown.
- A Usage Breakdown of what consumed the balance, by meter.
- For organization admins, an Upgrade Now button that opens Stripe Checkout.
- A Sign Out button, always available to everyone.
Non-admins see the same overlay without the upgrade button — just a note that only organization administrators can upgrade the subscription. The short version: ping your org admin.
Cluster sizing on credit mode
To stop a brand-new org from burning its starter credits in an afternoon, the onboarding wizard caps clusters at Small while you're in credit mode. This applies as you create your first Trino, Doris, Spark, or DuckDB cluster — larger sizes appear with an Upgrade Required badge and stay disabled until you move to metered billing.
This cap lives in the onboarding flow specifically. For how cluster sizing works in general, see Clusters, wake and sleep.
Upgrading from credit to metered
Upgrading is how you lift the credit ceiling. From the credit-mode Billing page (or the exhausted overlay), an org admin hits Set Up Payment Method — that opens Stripe Checkout to capture a card and flip the org to metered billing. Metered billing is pure usage-based; there's no fixed monthly fee.
Once you're metered, the same page becomes Manage Billing, and Open Billing Portal sends you to the Stripe Customer Portal to update your card, download invoices, and review history.
Where to watch usage
- Billing & Subscription (per org) — the authoritative org view: current usage by meter, and in credit mode, the balance and what's been deducted. Org admins only.
- Usage Metrics under Admin — an aggregate, cross-service view for superadmins.