Usage & Limits

Every environment's use is metered by the calendar month (UTC): what its modules did, what its machines and databases ran, and what it sent. Studio shows it on the project's Settings › Usage, environment by environment.

An environment is held to limits of three kinds, and each one says so in its answer:

• Rates, per second: a call over one is refused for that second (429 with Retry-After: 1).
• Limits on the month: a limit set on one of the environment's metrics refuses that use, or only counts it, until the month ends.
• What a free project gets: its traffic is slowed past 5 GB, its chat messages past a million a month or 1 GiB kept, and a free database sleeps past its 400 hours. None of them stops the project or loses its data.

Where usage is shown

Project › Settings › Usage shows one environment at a time (choose it at the top when the project has more than one) over the last 3, 6 or 12 months:

• this month's API requests, monthly active users, stored data and machine hours, each beside its months;
• Limits: each limit set on the environment, with what this month has used against it, and Blocked once a limit that refuses is reached;
• a chart per month of requests, active users, notifications sent by channel, stored data, download traffic, realtime messages, analytics events, machine hours, machine internet traffic, response traffic and database hours by size;
• Every metered item: every metric the environment used, this month and the month before.

Every member of the organization reads it (Organizations). The organization's owners are also mailed when a free project has sent 80% of its month's traffic and when it has sent all of it, and when a free database has been awake 80% of its hours and all of them.

What is metered

A metric that is "the month's largest" is a level, not a sum: what the environment held at its most during the month.

Rates

Realtime has rates of its own, which a project may lower (Web Realtime), and so do sign-ins and the messages a project sends. The SDKs send a refused call again on their own, waiting what Retry-After asks, when it is a read or a write that cannot be done twice (Server SDK).

Limits on the month

A limit on the month names one metric of one environment and how much of it the month may use, and is one of two kinds: one that refuses past it, and one that only counts. Palbase sets them; the Limits panel lists those set on the environment. A month's use starts again at 00:00 UTC on its first day.

When a limit that refuses is reached, that use is refused until the month ends, and the refusal's Retry-After is the seconds until then:

A limit that counts refuses nothing: the use goes on and is metered.

What a free project gets

An environment is free while it is on the Free plan — every environment starts on it — and while its credit has run out or its month is at its monthly limit (Billing). Each environment is free on its own: one running out holds no other.

• Sizes. Its machines are of the shared-256 size, the one free machine size, and it has one database at most, of the free size: a project holds one database of a free size at a time (Databases). Every other size is paid for: opening a machine or a database of one, or moving one to it, is 403 size_not_available. palbase machines:sizes and palbase databases:sizes list the sizes and which of them the environment may open now (Machines).
• Traffic. It sends 5 GB a month at full speed: its machines' internet traffic and its response traffic together. Past it, until the month ends, its machines' traffic and answers and the files its storage hands out go at about 256 kbit/s; nothing is stopped, and the API's other answers are not slowed. A slowed project's downloads are paced, and one more than it may have under way at once is 429 rate_limited with Retry-After. See Reaching the internet.
• Chat messages. 1 million messages a month, and 1 GiB of them kept. Past either, until the month ends, the project's messages go at about one a second, all its people and its server together: a send waits its turn, 10 seconds at the most, and one whose turn is further off is 429 slowed with Retry-After — the SDKs keep it in their outbox and send it again. No message is lost, and reading, syncing and everything else go on at full speed. What is kept counts at its month's largest, so a project that keeps more than 1 GiB is slowed again early each month: remove old messages, or set the project's retention (Messaging), to stay under it.
• A free database is awake 400 hours a month at most. Past them it sleeps until the month ends, refusing connections, with its data kept; from then its next connection wakes it.
• AI. $1.00 of Palbase's models a month, at the provider's price and 10%. Past it, until the month ends, a call to them is 402 ai_payment_required; a call under the project's own provider key goes on (AI).

An environment on Pay as you go with credit is never slowed for its traffic, and its machines and databases may be of any size; a database of the free size keeps its 400 hours whoever holds it. What it uses past its own free quotas is charged from its own credit (Billing).

Each module's own limits

Related

• Billing — each environment's plan and credit, and what is charged
• Logs — every request, with its status
• Organizations — who sees the usage page, and who is mailed
• Machines — sizes, sleep, and traffic to the internet
• Databases — sizes, sleep and storage