Account & billing

Billing, top-ups, and vouchers

How per-second billing works, how to add credit, how vouchers redeem, and how auto top-up keeps sessions alive.

DeskBoot bills in USD by the second. Your balance ticks down continuously while a session is running, ticks down slowly while it's stopped (EBS volume retention), and stops moving when you terminate the session.

Per-second meter

Starter: $0.05/hr ≈ $0.0000139/sec
Standard: $0.09/hr ≈ $0.000025/sec
Performance: $0.18/hr ≈ $0.00005/sec
Pro: $0.38/hr ≈ $0.000106/sec
Windows surcharge: +$0.04/hr on every Windows instance — Microsoft licensing fee, passed through unchanged
Stopped instance: ~$0.08/GB/month on the EBS volume only

Free $5 signup credit

We grant a $5 credit on first successful card verification. That's about 100 hours of Starter compute, or 50 hours of Standard. It's enough to actually test the product before you spend any of your own money.

Topping up

Billing dashboard → "Top up your balance". Type any USD amount (minimum $5, maximum $500 per top-up) and choose:

Saved card (instant). Charges your default card via Paystack, credits your balance within seconds.
Other way (Paystack checkout). Opens Paystack's payment page where Kenyan customers can pick M-Pesa, bank transfer, USSD, or another card. Funds appear within minutes.

If your Settings → Display currency is KES, the Paystack page shows the equivalent KES amount at our current FX rate. Switch back to USD any time.

Auto top-up

Settings → Auto top-up. Define a threshold (default $2) and an amount (default $10). When your balance drops below the threshold, we charge your default card the top-up amount automatically. This stops running sessions from auto-stopping at $0.

Disable it any time. We email you a receipt for every auto top-up.

Vouchers

We hand out DBOOT-XXXX-YYYY codes during beta and to event attendees. Paste the code on the Billing page and your balance updates immediately. Vouchers require a verified phone and a card on file.

Each voucher redeems once. Already-used or expired codes return a clear error.

Currency display

The ledger is USD internally. If you live somewhere we support locally (currently Kenya), Settings → Display currency lets you see balances and charges in KES alongside USD, and unlocks local payment channels at checkout.

Low-balance behavior

We email you when balance crosses below your auto top-up threshold. If you have auto top-up on, we charge your card right after sending the email. If you don't, and your balance hits $0 while sessions are running, we auto-stop them and email you the list. They sit in STOPPED state until you top up — no compute charges accrue, just EBS storage.

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