How hourly billing works

An hourly service has a price per hour instead of a monthly or yearly price. Coritan takes that price from your credit balance each hour the service runs, and stops charging for the month when the next hour would reach the monthly cap. There is no renewal invoice.

A Cloud Compute instance, a game server, a database and a web deployment that you order on your own account have no price per hour. They are billed by what they use, which is also taken from your credit each hour (How usage billing works). The deposit below unlocks both. The rest of this page is about a service that keeps an hourly plan price, such as an instance or a server you ordered before usage billing. A service ordered for an organization, and an App Deployment on pay as you go, have no monthly cap: they are charged by what they use (How App Deployment is billed).

You can order an hourly plan once you have added at least $10.00 of credit in total, by default. Credit you add by card, PayPal, checkout page, automatic top-up or cryptocurrency all counts. Once unlocked, hourly billing stays unlocked when your balance falls again.

Until then, an hourly order is refused with You must deposit at least $10 before using hourly billing services, and an order billed by use with Deposit at least $10.00 before you start anything that bills by use. The deposit stays in your account as credit. Add credit to your balance to unlock it.

Ordering an hourly service raises a first invoice for one hour's price, plus any setup fee and the first period of each add-on ordered with it. That pays for the first hour. (A service billed by use has no first-hour invoice: it is charged for what it uses from the moment it is created.) After it, Coritan checks every hourly service once an hour:

• A game server or a database is charged for the hour when it is running at the check. A stopped server costs nothing.
• A Cloud Compute instance is charged for every hour it exists, stopped or running, until you cancel it. Only a suspended instance costs nothing.

Each charge takes one hour's price from your credit. Hourly charges are not invoiced and do not appear on the Transactions tab. The service's Billing tab shows what it has cost this month as Used this month, and the API lists each charge as Hourly charge for service #311, with your service's number.

Each hourly service has a monthly cap: 672 hours of its hourly price by default, set when you order it. For example, a plan at $0.0200/hr caps at $13.44 a month. Coritan stops charging a service when the next hour would reach the cap, so the plan above stops at 671 hours and $13.42. Charging starts again on the 1st of the next month, when every hourly service begins again from zero. The service keeps running.

Used this month shows the cap beside what you have used, for example $4.12 of $13.44 cap.

When your credit cannot cover the next hour, Coritan first tries an automatic top-up, if you turned it on. If that fails or is off, Coritan suspends the service with the reason Insufficient credit balance.

Adding credit resumes it once your credit covers what you owe: the use that is priced and not yet charged, and one hour of each service with a flat hourly price. A sweep every hour resumes the services a top-up did not reach, such as credit an admin added. Only a service suspended for no credit resumes this way. A suspension for abuse, for an unpaid invoice or by Coritan staff keeps its own reason and stays until that is lifted (Failed payments and suspended services).

Cancel the service on its Billing tab. An hourly service ends at once and its charges stop from the next hour (Cancel a service). Stopping a Cloud Compute instance that has an hourly price does not stop its charges. Stopping one billed by use ends its memory and CPU charges and keeps its disk charge (How Cloud Compute is billed).

• Add credit to your balance
• Turn on automatic top-up
• How usage billing works
• Transactions and payment attempts

GET /billing/hourly-eligibility says whether you can order an hourly plan:

curl https://api.coritan.com/api/v1/billing/hourly-eligibility \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $CORITAN_TOKEN"

{
  "eligible": false,
  "total_deposited": 5.0,
  "minimum_required": 10.0,
  "remaining": 5.0
}

total_deposited is all the credit you have added, minimum_required the amount that unlocks hourly billing and remaining what is still needed, all in US dollars.

GET /billing/credit/forecast says how long your credit lasts at the pace of the last 7 days of hourly use. GET /billing/credit/ledger lists every debit with its service and hours, in US dollars (currency is USD).

curl https://api.coritan.com/api/v1/billing/credit/forecast \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $CORITAN_TOKEN"

{
  "currency": "USD",
  "balance": "14.0000",
  "pays_by_invoice": false,
  "basis_days": 7,
  "daily_rate": "0.4000",
  "days_left": 35.0,
  "runs_out_on": "2026-11-16"
}

currency is always USD: balance and daily_rate are in US dollars, whatever currency your account pays in. daily_rate, days_left and runs_out_on are null when no hourly use took credit in those days, and for an account that pays by invoice (pays_by_invoice), which credit never runs out for. runs_out_on is also null when the credit lasts more than ten years.

A service's hourly figures are in GET /services/{service_ref}: amount is the hourly price, monthly_cap the cap, hourly_usage_this_month what it has cost this month and hourly_cap_reached whether it has hit the cap. The hourly charges themselves are in recent_transactions from GET /billing/credit, which returns your last 20 credit movements (Billing overview).