Pricing and billing

Every charge

Charge	When	How it is priced	Where you see it
Creation fee	Once, when you create an instance	The same for every size, set by the platform	The offering, the rent form, the quote of `ghost instance create`
Balance hold	Held while the instance exists, then released	Days of the base price, plus a home instance’s gateway base or a cloud instance’s address price	The offering, the instance’s Overview, Reserved on Billing
Base price	From when its creation succeeds until its deletion completes	Per month, the offering’s	Capacity, the offering, the instance’s Price
CPU time	Where the provider’s hypervisor measured it	Above the base price, up to the price at full CPU use	Usage › Charges
Traffic	As the platform meters it	Per TiB: the provider’s on a cloud host, the gateway tier’s on a home host	Usage › Charges
Gateway base charge	Monthly, from when the gateway has its place for a home instance	The gateway tier’s, at the gateway it was placed on	The instance’s Price, the Gateway kind on Billing
Address price	Monthly, while a cloud instance is billed, where its provider charges for the address	The provider’s	The Address kind on Billing
Backup creation and restore	Once, when the backup is published or the restore is accepted	Per GiB, the platform’s	The instance’s Backups tab, the quote of `ghost backup create` and `restore`
Backup storage	In 15-minute intervals until deletion completes	Per GiB per 30-day month, the price the backup recorded	Billing

Amounts that the platform’s runtime configuration sets, such as the creation fee and the balance hold, are shown with each offering on the website and by ghost catalog offering; this page does not repeat their current values.

Charges and resource limits

Creating an instance

Creating a host or an instance carries a small creation charge that limits abusive database and infrastructure growth.

An instance’s creation charge is the same for every size.
The host creation charge is non-refundable.
Each catalog offering lists what creating an instance from it costs besides its monthly prices: instance_creation_charge_microusd is the one-time creation fee, and balance_reservation_microusd is the part of your balance held while the instance exists.
Before it creates anything, ghost instance create prints the offering’s terms and costs on stderr: the creation fee, with --backup the backup’s restore charge, which is not refunded, the balance hold (for a home instance plus its gateway’s base charge), the monthly prices, and the traffic price.
A creation your available balance cannot pay for is refused with insufficient_balance. Its message names what it needs (the creation charge, the restore charge and the hold) and what is available.

The balance hold

An instance also locks a separate, refundable balance hold for its lifetime. The locked amount is not spendable while the instance exists and is released according to the instance lifecycle and compensation rules.

The hold is a number of days of the instance’s base price that the platform sets (30 by default), and no less than a minimum the platform sets.
It is fixed when the instance is created: a later change of the setting does not change the hold of an instance that exists.
A home instance also locks its gateway tier’s monthly base charge.
A cloud instance also locks a month of its address price where its provider charges for the address.
Each hold comes back to your available balance when its instance is deleted.

Refunds of a failed creation

An instance’s creation charge is refunded if its creation fails, unless you caused the failure, together with every gateway base charge of a home instance.

The refund is posted automatically as one refund transaction when the creation fails, or at the latest when the failed instance is deleted.
A failure you caused is not refunded: a restore from a hosted backup that you did not authorize in time, or whose key could not be unwrapped, or an instance you deleted while its restore waited for your authorization.
A creation from a backup also keeps its restore charge.
Refunded creations still count toward the daily creation limit.

While an instance exists

An instance pays its base price from when its creation succeeds until its deletion completes, whatever its power state.

Host downtime: while its host is down, the downtime that SLA credits count bills no base price and no CPU time.
CPU use is added where the provider’s hypervisor measured it.
Billing can also end earlier, at a provider’s retirement deadline or when your balance runs out.

Traffic

An instance pays one traffic price: its provider’s on a cloud host and its gateway tier’s on a home host.

Traffic is metered by the platform, never by the provider’s hypervisor: by a router VM on a cloud host and by the hosted gateway of a home instance.
Metered traffic is billed as counted, including traffic to a stopped instance and traffic counted while its host is down.
A home instance’s gateway bills the traffic it sends into its tunnel toward the instance and the traffic it receives from the instance’s host. An inbound flood that the gateway drops, or traffic the tunnel discards, is never billed.

Gateway charges of a home instance

The gateway tiers are shared_bandwidth, high_bandwidth and shared_ip (see Connect and networking).

Their recurring and traffic prices are included in the offering information: the monthly base charge and the traffic price of the gateway the instance would be placed on, which can differ by gateway location.
A shared_ip home instance pays the shared IP’s price per the price list, which the offering shows.
A home instance’s gateway base charge starts earlier than its base price, once the gateway has its place for the instance: with shared_bandwidth once the instance’s own address has been reserved, with high_bandwidth once the instance’s own gateway has been created. That can be minutes before the instance runs.
It is refunded with the creation charge when the creation fails other than by your doing.
The gateway prices an instance pays are those of the gateway it was placed on. When Gigahost changes them, the instance takes the new prices after 90 days with a notice, as with a provider’s prices.
Moving an instance to another gateway location makes it pay that location’s gateway prices from the move on.

Address charges of a cloud instance

A cloud instance whose provider charges for its public address pays that monthly price for as long as the instance is billed.
Without --gateway-tier, a cloud instance gets a Dedicated IP, at the offering’s address_microusd_per_month.
A cloud instance’s Shared IP is included: it costs nothing beyond the instance’s price (the shared_ip entry’s monthly price is 0, shown as “included”), and its traffic is at the provider’s rate.
A change of the address price takes effect after 90 days with a notice, as the provider’s other prices do.

Price changes

Pending price changes are on the instance’s Overview under Price and in Notices, with the exact time they take effect, at least 90 days after the notice.

SLA credits

When a provider’s host is down, each affected instance earns an SLA credit: its base price for the downtime, times the multiplier of the SLA tier it was rented with (1×, 5×, or 20×). Time that the platform itself was at fault does not count.

The credit is kept for you at that provider. It pays that provider’s later charges before your balance does: the provider’s share of your instances’ usage, and local backup creation, restore, and storage on its hosts.
It cannot be withdrawn, and it never pays gateway charges, hosted backups, creation charges, or balance holds.
ghost account balance lists your credit per provider apart from your balance, and ghost account sla-credits lists each credit.
Billing › SLA credits (/billing/sla-credits) lists each credit with its instance, provider and downtime.

Backups

Backup creation and restore carry separate one-time charges, and a backup you keep is charged for its storage. The prices are the platform’s, the same on every host, and come from the public backup-pricing catalog:

Backup	Creation	Restore	Storage
Hosted, off the host	$0.005 per GB	$0.005 per GB	$0.03 per GB per month
Local, on the instance’s host	$0.001 per GB	$0.001 per GB	$0.01 per GB per month

Displayed GB/TB units mean GiB/TiB. Prices are per GiB, while the ledger rounds artifact bytes upward to MiB and then rounds the micro-USD amount upward.
The traffic of a backup, its upload and the download of a restore, is not charged.
These prices apply to the backup’s compressed size: a backup is charged for its own size, the compressed and encrypted artifact, which is usually much less than the disk.

When a backup is charged

Nothing is held for a backup. It is charged once, when the finished backup is published, after a hosted backup’s upload has completed: for the size of the compressed and encrypted artifact, and for no more than the size of the volume.

A backup that fails or that you cancel before is charged nothing.
As nobody knows the artifact’s size before it is made, a backup is accepted while your balance covers a backup as large as the volume and $1 beside. Otherwise it is refused with insufficient_balance, and the message names the amounts.
In ghost account history the charge is one row (backup_creation) with the instance.
A restore’s exact immutable-artifact charge is posted when its job is accepted and is non-refundable.

Who is paid, and storage

A local backup’s creation, restore, and storage are paid to the provider of its host, from your SLA credit at that provider first. A hosted backup’s are paid to the platform.
Restore and retained-storage prices are copied to the backup when it is created, so later price changes do not affect it.
Retained storage is charged at the per-GB/month price the backup recorded, using a fixed 30-day month, and is billed in 15-minute intervals until the asynchronous delete job actually removes the artifact.
Hosted retained storage initially costs $0.03/GB per fixed 30-day month and is billed in the same 15-minute intervals until deletion completes.
Deleting an instance does not delete its retained backups, which stay billed (Delete).

What `ghost` signs

The CLI signs the operation, resource IDs, destination, current price revision, maximum charge, and idempotency key with the separate billing key derived from your active account key. If you use an older account key for a pre-rotation backup, the active account key still signs this new paid operation.

Ceilings

Platform ceilings cap the creation and the restore of a backup at $0.01/GB and its storage at $0.03/GB/month.
An instance’s traffic price is limited to approximately $50/TB.
Platform-configured prices and charges are bounded by runtime ceilings plus compiled hard maxima to contain configuration mistakes.

Resource limits

The platform also limits active instances, recent host and instance creations, jobs, backups, login URLs, sessions, authentication keys, and pending host enrollment tokens. Temporary records expire and are removed automatically. Limits and charges are published configuration and may change between requests.

When a provider retires a host

Host records are never erased by providers. An empty enrollment can be retired, but the API rejects retirement while an instance, a host-side instance resource, or a local backup a renter still keeps remains. The retired identity and tenant history stay visible.

A host with active customers instead requires an irrevocable notice of at least seven full days.

The host stops taking new instances immediately.
The exact server-derived deadline and deletion progress appear on each affected instance.
Instance usage, gateway base charges, and the refundable balance hold stop at that deadline even if cleanup takes longer; resources remain reserved until deletion is confirmed.
Local-backup billing also stops at the deadline, while hosted backups remain available.

A provider can give the same minimum notice for one instance without draining the host.

Where you see your charges

The website’s Billing page and ghost account history list what was charged; Manage instances says where to find them.

Billing › Charges and credits

The Charges and credits tab totals your charges and credits per UTC day, or per month: a row for each kind of charge and instance.

Each row has the part of your balance it moved (available, reserved, or SLA credit at a provider), the Amount it was for, and its Cost.
The amount is how many for a creation fee, the time charged for an instance’s usage or a gateway’s base price, the size of a backup’s creation or restore, and for backup storage the total size of the backups kept in that day or month (those made before it ended and not deleted before it began).
An instance’s usage also says its traffic and average CPU load, such as “1 day, 1.5 GiB traffic, 25% CPU”.
A home instance’s gateway charges are in the row of its usage, which costs both; the Gateway kind shows its base price alone.
A cloud instance’s address charges are rows of the Address kind, with the time charged for.
Deposits, credits and balance holds have no amount.

Above the tabs’ lists, Available is what you can spend, Reserved what your instances hold until they are deleted, and Total credit both.

An instance’s Usage tab

Under Charges, the Usage tab shows what each period was charged for traffic, for CPU usage above the base price, and in all. A 15-minute period’s charges show once it is billed.

`ghost account history`

ghost account history lists each entry on its own (--json with its breakdown and transaction ID).

If your balance runs low

Warning. Gigahost warns you when your unlocked balance, with your SLA credit at providers where it pays part of your costs, is projected to run out within seven days.
Act. Add funds that cover more than seven days, or delete instances you do not need: held balance pays no charge, and each hold comes back to your available balance when its instance is deleted.
Zero balance. If your unlocked balance reaches zero, the backend immediately stops further instance, gateway, and ordinary-backup billing. It then uses durable jobs to stop each instance, create an encrypted final backup where local or hosted capacity is available, delete your other backups, and delete the instance.
Recover. After topping up, select a current offering and create a replacement from the final backup with ghost instance create --backup <BACKUP_UUID>.
Zero again. If the unlocked balance later reaches zero again, all remaining billable final recovery backups are deleted.

The warning

The projection uses your recent recurring spend and your currently committed base, gateway, and backup-storage costs.
The warning and estimated exhaustion time appear with your account balance and as a notice in ghost account notifications, which names your available balance, the daily cost it runs out at, and the balance holds of your instances.
Adding funds that cover more than seven days again ends the warning, and so does a day in which nothing was billed: its notice is marked read, and a funding_warning_resolved notice says why.

The final recovery backup

Recurring charges cannot push the platform into extending unlimited credit. The jobs that run at a zero balance survive backend and provider restarts and use bounded retries.

Automatic backups from this process are clearly marked final_recovery in backup listings (purpose: final_recovery in ghost backup list). That permanent marker identifies the restoration source for a force-deleted instance; it does not change if the source instance no longer exists.
The website’s Backups page highlights them.
Final-backup creation itself is waived; its stored restore price and retained-storage price still apply.
Deleting the instance unlocks its refundable balance hold, and that balance keeps paying for the final recovery backup.