Manage Your Billing
- Capella Operational
Couchbase Capella bills you for the size and number of operational clusters in your organization.
All billing in Capella takes place at the organization level. Your billing settings apply to all projects and operational clusters in your organization.
To configure billing settings for your organization, you must have the Organization Owner role.
About Cluster and Service Support Plans
Billing for your organization is based on the chosen Support Plan for your clusters or services:
You can change the Support Plan for your cluster at any time. For more information about changing your cluster’s plan, see Change a Cluster’s Plan and Support Timezone.
For more information about the available Support Plans in Capella, see the Capella Support Policy.
Free Tier Plan
Clusters and services on the Free plan are always free and available, as long as you’re actively using them. You do not need to have a credit balance or credit card in your organization to use the Free plan.
Each organization can use only 1 free tier cluster.
Free plan clusters are community-supported through the Couchbase forums.
Basic Support Plan
Clusters and services on the Basic Plan receive technical support through the Couchbase forums. Basic clusters and services have limited capabilities, suited to development and non-mission critical production systems.
You can use the Basic plan with credit card payments, pre-paid credits, or pay-as-you-go.
Developer Pro Support Plan
Clusters and services on the Developer Pro plan receive technical support through the Capella Support team, within 8 hours. Developer Pro clusters and services have more features, suited to production-ready applications and systems.
You can use the Developer Pro plan with credit card payments, pre-paid credits, or pay-as-you-go.
Enterprise Plan
Clusters and services on the Enterprise plan receive technical support through the Capella Support team, within 30 minutes. Enterprise clusters and services have the most features and are suited to mission-critical applications with heavy workloads.
You can only use the Enterprise plan with pre-paid credits.
How Couchbase Calculates Your Bill
Couchbase calculates cluster charges daily.
Any hourly charges for the current day are reflected in your organization’s balance on the next calendar day. Monthly usage periods for each calendar month include daily usage.
When a Cluster is On
Couchbase charges by the clock hour for Capella operational clusters. It bases this hourly rate on:
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The cloud service provider and region where the operational cluster is deployed.
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The operational cluster size, determined by:
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Number of nodes
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Number of vCPUs
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Amount of RAM
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GiB of disk storage
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Disk IOPS and throughput (AWS and Azure Ultra Disk only)
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The operational cluster Support Plan.
Your operational cluster becomes billable after it successfully deploys and is in a running state. You’re billed for each clock hour that your operational cluster runs. For example, if your operational cluster ran at 10:30 a.m. and was turned off or deleted at 11:30 a.m. on the same day, you’re billed for 2 on hours because the operational cluster ran during 2 clock hours.
You can change a clusters size or change its Support Plan after its deployment. The hourly rate for that operational cluster increases or decreases based on your changes.
When a Cluster is Off
For each clock hour where a Capella operational cluster is off, the hourly rate for an operational cluster is based on:
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The cloud service provider and region where the operational cluster is deployed.
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The operational cluster size, determined by:
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Number of nodes
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GiB of disk storage
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Disk IOPS and throughput (AWS and Azure Ultra Disk only)
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For example, if your operational cluster ran at 10:30 a.m., was turned off at 11:30 a.m., and deleted at 1:30 p.m., you would be billed for 2 on clock hours and 2 off clock hours.
App Services
For more information about billing for App Services, see Billing.
Bucket Backups
Every clock hour, Capella measures the GiB amount of backup object storage consumed by each operational cluster.
The GiB size of a backup volume is converted into an hourly volume, and multiplied by a $ per GiB rate. This rate varies by region and cloud service provider.
For more information about bucket backups, see Back Up and Restore Bucket Data.
Cluster Backups
Every day, Capella measures the amount of snapshot storage consumed by each operational cluster. This is multiplied by a $ amount per GiB to calculate total cluster backup credits.
This rate varies by region and cloud service provider.
For more information about storage and size calculations for cluster backups, see Backup Types.
Data Transfer Charges
AWS, GCP, and Azure all charge variable rates for data moved between and out of their services.
Capella passes through the cost of data transfer charges, based on the GiB amount and type of data transfer, for each operational cluster. Data transfer charges are in addition to any charges you may receive from a cloud service provider for connecting to Capella services.
Cloud service providers typically charge for the following data transfer types:
| Type | Description |
|---|---|
Inter-Zone or Intra-Region |
Charged for traffic crossing Availability Zones, VPC Peering Connections, or public IP addresses within the same region. In AWS and GCP, these charges are commonly .01 credit per GB, for both ingress and egress. In Azure, this is free of charge, except for VNET peering. These are the most common data transfer charges you’ll incur for using Capella. |
Inter Region |
Charges for instance traffic crossing regions, within the same cloud service provider. Inter-region traffic rates are specific to both the source regions, or where the data is moving out of, and the destination region, or where the data is moving to. Charges range from .01 credits/GB (between AWS |
Internet |
Data transferred out to the Internet, including data transferred to other Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) providers. These charges are typical .09 credits/GB in North American and European regions, with higher rates in Asia Pacific. |
The following data transfers are free of charge:
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Data import into Capella.
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Data transferred between instances in the same Availability Zone.
Private Endpoints
If you choose to connect to Capella through Private Endpoints, Couchbase provisions a single load balancer per operational cluster that enables that connection.
You’ll be charged for Private Endpoints based on the following costs:
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A fixed hourly connection cost, with an hourly rate that varies based on the region where the load balancer is deployed. Charges are for each clock hour that the Private Endpoint service is provisioned, regardless of usage or the state of your operational cluster (on or off).
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A per GiB data processing charge for data processed through the load balancer, with a per GiB rate that varies based on the region where the Private Endpoint service is used.
These charges are in addition to any Private Endpoint costs from AWS or Azure for the use of AWS PrivateLink or Azure Private Link.
Payment Options
Your payment options and final usage calculations depend on how you want to pay for your Capella usage:
Couchbase Capella Credits (Up-Front Credits)
You can choose to purchase pre-paid credits to pay for your Capella usage up-front through a contract with Couchbase Sales. If you use more than your pre-purchased credit balance during a calendar month, you’ll be billed through Capella’s pay-as-you-go payment option for the additional usage. You must pay this bill in arrears.
| You can upgrade from Credit Card Payments to up-front credits at any time. After you have switched to up-front credits with a sales agreement, you cannot switch back to credit card payments. |
Your credit balance updates once every calendar day and reflects the previous day’s cumulative usage across all operational clusters in your organization. Your monthly usage periods are used for reporting purposes only, unless you run out of pre-paid Couchbase Capella Credits.
To enable credit purchases for your organization, you must add an Activation ID to your account. Contact Couchbase Sales to get an Activation ID and start using pre-paid credits.
Your credits expire if they’re not used within 12 months.
Your organization’s billing contact receives an invoice for the purchased credits based on the currency equivalent outlined in your purchase agreement.
Pay-As-You-Go (On-Demand Credits)
Go through one of Capella’s Cloud Service Provider (CSP) marketplaces to get started with a pay-as-you-go option. You’ll receive an invoice through your CSP for your previous month’s usage on Capella.
All invoices and payments are managed through your CSP’s account.
To start with pay-as-you-go through your Cloud Service Provider, go to:
| You can upgrade from Credit Card Payments to on-demand credits at any time. After you have switched to on-demand credits with your CSP, you cannot switch back to credit card payments through Capella. |
Credit Card Payments
You can choose to add a credit card to your organization to get billed directly for your Capella usage, instead of purchasing pre-paid credits through Couchbase Sales or a supported cloud provider’s marketplace. Couchbase bills your credit card for any usage in the previous calendar month, similar to the pay-as-you-go method.
If you choose to pay for your Capella usage through a credit card, you can deploy clusters and services on a Basic or Developer Pro Support Plan.
| You can switch your payment method from credit card billing to a contract with Couchbase Sales at any time. You must have a contract to deploy clusters and services on the Enterprise Support Plan. |
All usage charges are billed in USD ($). All payments are automatic.
Managing Credit Cards
You can add up to 5 credit cards to your organization as saved credit cards. The first card you add to your organization is marked as your default card. You can change your default credit card at any time.
Couchbase will only charge the credit card marked as the default in your organization.
If the card set as the default in your organization is close to its expiry date, Capella sends reminder emails to update your credit card details. Emails are sent 30 days, 7 days, and 1 day before your default credit card expires.
If your default credit card expires and payment cannot be processed, you might lose access to your paid clusters and services. For more information about how to update a saved credit card, see Edit a Saved Credit Card.
If you need to dispute a charge or have any questions related to credit card billing, create a support ticket with the Billing category.
Credit Card Payment Schedule
The default credit card in your organization will be charged on the seventh day of every month, based on your previous month’s usage.
If your payment fails to process, Couchbase tries to bill your default credit card again for 3 days. If by the fourteenth day of the month, Couchbase still has not processed a payment on your default credit card, all paid services and clusters in your organization are paused.
If no payment is received by the end of the calendar month after you incurred usage charges on Capella, all services and clusters will be deleted from your organization.