Billing

Manage your workspace subscription and understand how billing works

Your Akua subscription is tied to your workspace, not your personal account. Each workspace can have its own plan.

Two different billing integrations — don’t confuse them.

• This page: Your subscription to Akua (Free/Pro/Enterprise). This is what you pay to use the platform.
• Marketplace payments: Your customers paying you for your products. This uses Stripe Connect with your own Stripe merchant account.

These are completely separate. Upgrading your Akua plan does not affect how your marketplace customers are billed, and vice versa.

Pricing philosophy

Akua does not mark up infrastructure. When you use your own cloud provider key (BYOM), you pay the provider directly at their published prices: Hetzner at Hetzner prices, AWS at AWS prices. Akua charges only for the management layer.

See the plan comparison → for the full tier breakdown (Free, Pro, Enterprise).

Upgrading to Pro

Go to Billing in the dashboard sidebar. Click Upgrade to Pro to start a checkout session. Your workspace is upgraded immediately after payment.

Managing your subscription

Pro workspaces can manage their subscription from the Billing page. Click Manage Subscription to open the billing portal where you can:

• Update your payment method
• View invoices and payment history
• Cancel your subscription

Cancellation

When you cancel your Pro subscription:

1. Your workspace stays on Pro until the end of the current billing period.
2. You receive a confirmation email with a summary of what changes on the free tier.
3. The dashboard shows a cancellation notice with the exact end date.
4. You can reactivate any time before the period ends from the billing portal.

When the subscription period ends:

1. Your workspace returns to the free tier.
2. Auto-scaling is paused on managed clusters (BYOM clusters are unaffected).
3. Akua-managed machines are suspended (not deleted).
4. Snapshots are kept for 90 days so you can resume them if you re-subscribe.

After 90 days, suspended machine snapshots are permanently deleted. Re-subscribing after that point starts fresh with no data recovery.

Re-subscribing

When you upgrade again after cancellation:

1. Auto-scaling is re-enabled on managed clusters.
2. The dashboard shows any suspended machines with a Resume button.
3. Resuming a machine restores it from its snapshot: same hostname, same data.

Bring your own cloud key

Adding your own cloud provider API key (BYOM) bypasses all machine quotas and TTL limits. Your machines run in your cloud account and you pay the provider directly. Akua manages the Kubernetes lifecycle.

BYOM works on any plan, including Free. Configure it from the Compute page in the dashboard.

Bring your own cloud key to bypass all machine quotas and TTL limits on any plan. You pay your cloud provider directly; Akua adds zero markup on infrastructure costs.

Workspace access state

Every workspace has a current access state that determines what operations are permitted. You can read it from the API at any time. The possible states are:

State	Meaning
active	Normal operation: all resources are available.
payment_grace	A recent payment failed; existing resources keep running while the issue is resolved.
restricted	New provisions and installs are blocked; critical existing resources continue.
suspended	Resources are suspended; re-subscribing restores them.
ended	Subscription has ended and retention period has passed.
reactivating	A successful payment was processed and resources are being restored.

API

Manage subscriptions and check access state programmatically.

Workspaces API

Subscription, access state, billing portal, and tier change endpoints.

Authentication

Mint API tokens for programmatic access.

Related topics

Plans and pricing

Compare plans and resource limits in detail.

Machines

Machine lifecycle, suspend, and resume.

Quotas

Understand resource limits and check usage.

Marketplace payments

How your customers pay you for products.