Billing Overview

This topic provides an overview of HCP payment options, trial credits, and other billing-related information.

Trial Credits

When you first create a new HCP organization, you are automatically granted $50 in trial credits to apply towards HCP services. You can optionally add a credit card during setup at this time. If this is skipped, your organization will remain in Trial status until credits are consumed or a credit card is added. You can add or edit a credit card for your organization at any point from the Billing tile in your Project or Organization Dashboard in the HCP Portal.

Before trial credits are depleted, you should specify a payment method to continue using HCP services, with the exception of HCP Packer which has a free tier. Refer to Payments for details about setting up your payment plan.

If you do not add a payment method for your organization, your billing page will indicate Trial status and the organization will be limited to a single Consul or Vault development cluster. Add a payment method so that you can deploy up to three clusters and unlock production-grade clusters.

The following image shows the remaining credits reflected in the Billing summary card on the HCP organization screen.

The following image shows the Trial status reflected in the This month's summary card on the HCP account summary screen.

If your organization has a credit card on file, credits are deducted before accruing charges against the card. Organizations with annual contracts do not consume credits.

Payment Options

You can use a credit card for payment or complete a contract agreement.

Credit Card Payments

Adding a credit card will accrue your organization’s usage charges over the course of each calendar month. You will be automatically charged at the end of the month. You will receive an email with the invoice copy at the email address specified when adding your credit card. Additionally, you can now download invoices and receipts directly from the HCP billing portal, making it easier to access and manage your billing records.

Annual Contracts

If you’ve purchased an Entitlement or HashiCorp Flex^TM contract to use in HCP, HashiCorp will activate your organization. For additional information on HCP contracts, contact sales.

Billing Models

Log into HCP and navigate to Billing via the billing summary tile on your Project or Organization dashboard to view billing information. HCP has the following billing models:

• Trial: This is the default state when you first create your HCP organization. It is possible to have a maximum of three resources of the same type. You can freely create HashiCorp Virtual Networks and add users. However, Vault and Consul are limited to a single development cluster each, and associated costs from those clusters are deducted from your trial credit balance. Adding a payment method will unlock Standard and Plus editions and higher resource limits. After your trial credits are depleted, your existing resources are deleted and you will be restricted from deploying new HCP services until you add a payment method.

• Pay-as-you-go (credit card): Once you add a credit card, your organization’s accrued usage for the month will be charged on the first day of the following calendar month. HCP sends an invoice copy to the email address specified when setting up the credit card. You can change the email address by editing the credit card details in the ‘Billing’ tab. If your organization has remaining trial credits, those will be drawn down before charges accrue to your credit card.

• Entitlement Contract: Entitlement contracts let you specify the HCP services your organization wants to use for your desired term and receive a discount over pay-as-you-go. HashiCorp will activate your organization and invoice you directly during the orders process. For additional information on HCP contracts, contact sales.

• HashiCorp Flex^TM HashiCorp Flex^TM lets you commit to a specific amount of spend upfront and draw down the balance over time based on your actual cloud service consumption. Unlike entitlement contracts, you do not have to specify which services you want to use upfront, and tiered usage pricing and discounts are calculated automatically. For additional information, refer to the HashiCorp Flex Billing page or contact sales.

HCP Usage

HCP services are deployed as resources that are billed based on usage. We support billing for all generally-available services on HCP. Resources list the hourly rate when you deploy them, but actual usage is metered and calculated on a per-minute basis for increased accuracy. For example, a Consul development cluster starts at $0.02 per hour. Prices may vary slightly by country or your HVN’s cloud provider region.

The HCP billing account summary page will show your organization’s running usage for the month and a summary of charges accrued thus far by resource and grouped by date if the charges are related. Grouped charges will include upgrades or downgrades to resources like Consul clusters. You will not be invoiced until the end of the month for credit card payments.

The following image shows an example of usage for an organization with a Flex billing model reflected in the HCP account summary screen.

Pay-As-You-Go Usage

HCP services are deployed as resources that are billed based on usage. Most services will have an hourly rate which is displayed when you deploy the resource and on our pricing page, but usage will be metered minutely for higher accuracy. For example, a Consul development cluster starts at $0.02 per hour, but is billed minutely. Consuming 30 minutes would result in a charge of $0.01. Prices may vary slightly based on your country or HashiCorp Virtual Network’s cloud provider region.

The HCP billing account summary page displays your organization’s monthly running usage and costs, grouped by resource, and updated daily. Grouped charges include upgrades or downgrades to resources like Consul clusters. At the end of the month, charges are finalized, calculated with taxes if necessary, and charged to your credit card. An email is sent to the billing email address configured when setting up a credit card. This email can be changed at any time by editing the credit card details.

The following image shows an example of usage for an organization with a monthly pay-as-you-go (PAYG) plan reflected in the HCP account summary screen.

Account Delinquency

Your trial resources are automatically deleted in trial organizations if you do not add a payment method before the credit balance runs out. We recommend adding a payment method early to ensure resources stay up, as credits will be consumed before any charges.

Organizations configured with a credit card are charged and invoiced automatically on the first of each month for the prior month’s usage. If the credit card on file is expired or unable to process payment, we will retry payment several times over the next few weeks and notify you at the specified billing email address. HCP will freeze your ability to deploy additional resources. If the account is deemed delinquent after a sufficient duration without response, we may delete your organization’s paid resources.

Entitlement Contract and HashiCorp Flex^TM accounts will not have resources automatically deleted. If your Flex balance runs out, your account manager will reach out to discuss top-up and renewal options.