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Hourly or monthly?

On every plan we sell, the hourly rate is the monthly price divided by a month — the ratio lands between 728 and 732 hours, and a 30-day month is 720. So hourly carries no premium and stops the moment you destroy the machine. The honest advice is to start hourly, which costs us the commitment. Here is the arithmetic, and the two cases where hourly is the wrong answer.

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The arithmetic

Where the two prices meet

Monthly price ÷ hourly rate = the hours at which they are equal. Read from the catalogue, not typed — if we ever started charging a premium for the meter, this table would say so.

Monthly price, hourly rate and break-even hours for a sample of plans
PlanMonthlyHourlyBreak-evenvs a 720-hour month
U1-1$7.90$0.0108731 h+11 h
VPS-1$9.90$0.0136728 h+8 h
BD-8$11.90$0.0163730 h+10 h
C2-4$13.90$0.0190732 h+12 h
VPS-4$23.90$0.0327731 h+11 h

A break-even above 720 means running the whole month on the meter costs slightly LESS than buying the month. That is not a promotion; it is what happens when the hourly rate is derived from the monthly price instead of marked up.

What a test costs

The reason to start hourly

Deploy, measure, destroy. This is what that costs on the cheapest machine we sell.

Cost of running U1-1 for different test lengths
How long you run itHoursU1-1 costs
A quick look1$0.01
An afternoon6$0.06
A working day24$0.26
A week of staging168$1.81

Against ourselves

When hourly is the wrong answer

Two real cases. A comparison page that only lists advantages is an advert.

It needs a credit balance

An hourly machine is metered and invoiced from credit as it runs, so there has to be credit to draw on. That is friction a monthly order does not have. It cuts both ways: you cannot run up a bill you did not fund, and you also cannot forget to top up and expect the machine to survive. If a machine must never stop for a billing reason, buy the month.

Some machines cannot be hourly

Where a supplier bills us a whole month up front and refunds none of it, we sell that plan monthly only — because an hourly machine destroyed on day two would still be a month we had paid for. The configurator simply does not offer hourly on those, rather than taking the money and discovering the problem afterwards.

Plans that can be billed hourly

Questions

What people ask before they choose.

Is hourly billing more expensive than monthly?
Not here. On every plan we sell, the monthly price divided by the hourly rate lands between 728 and 732 hours — a 30-day month is 720 — so running a machine for a whole month by the hour costs within a rounding error of buying that month outright. That is a deliberate choice and not the industry norm: charging a premium for the meter is common, and it quietly punishes the customer for the thing that is actually good practice, which is testing before committing.
So should I always choose hourly?
Start hourly, yes — for anything you have not run before. It costs the same over a month and it stops costing the moment you destroy the machine, so the only thing you give up is the commitment. Move to monthly when the machine is one you know you are keeping and you would rather have one invoice than a meter. There are two real exceptions, both below: hourly needs a credit balance, and some machines cannot be hourly at all.
Why can some machines not be billed hourly?
Because we are billed for them by the month. Where a supplier takes a whole month up front and refunds none of it, an hourly machine we destroyed after two days would still be a month we had paid for — so those plans are sold monthly only, and the configurator will not offer an hourly option on them rather than take the money and discover the problem later. It is stated on the plan, not buried: if you can pick hourly, hourly is real.
What does hourly actually need from me?
A credit balance. An hourly machine is metered and invoiced from credit as it runs, so there has to be something to draw on — that is the one piece of friction monthly does not have. It also means an hourly machine stops when the credit does, which is the honest trade: you cannot accidentally run up a bill you did not fund, and you also cannot forget to top up and expect the machine to survive it.
Does destroying a machine actually stop the bill?
Yes — that is the whole point of the meter, and it is the reason to test this way. An hourly machine bills for the hours it existed. Destroy it and the meter stops; there is no notice period and no remainder of the month to pay. A monthly machine is the opposite by design: you bought the month.
Which should I use to compare two regions?
Hourly, without question. Deploy the same plan in both, measure from where your users actually are, and destroy the one that loses. At $0.0108 an hour for U1-1 that experiment costs less than the time you would spend reading somebody's latency table — and unlike the table, it measures your network rather than theirs.

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