Billing & credits
Stripe portal flow, the AI credit pool and per-action costs, reset cadence, upgrades, downgrades, and cancelling.
Frostbyte uses Stripe for all paid-plan billing. You manage your subscription, payment method, invoices, and cancellation through Stripe's hosted billing portal, Frostbyte never stores or displays credit card details.
Accessing the billing portal
In account settings, scroll to Billing and click Manage subscription. You're redirected to Stripe's hosted portal where you can:
- Update your payment method.
- Change plan (upgrade or downgrade).
- View and download past invoices.
- Cancel the subscription.
The portal session is single-use, closing the tab ends the session, and re-clicking Manage subscription generates a new one.
Upgrading
Upgrades take effect immediately. Stripe charges the prorated difference for the rest of the current billing cycle, and your new tier's features and limits unlock right away.
If you're hitting a hard limit (e.g. trying to create a sixth project on Basic), the upgrade prompt deep-links to the plan picker so you don't have to navigate.
See Plans and limits for the tier comparison.
Downgrading
Downgrades take effect at the end of your current billing cycle. Until then, you keep your current tier's limits and features. Stripe doesn't issue refunds for the unused portion of the higher tier.
If a downgrade would put you over a cap (e.g. 8 collaborators on a project, downgrading to a tier with a 5-cap), Frostbyte does not auto-remove members. You stay over-cap until you remove members yourself or upgrade back. The over-cap state blocks new invites, not existing access.
Cancelling
Cancel from the Stripe portal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing cycle, you keep your paid features until the renewal date passes, then drop to Free.
If you're on Free after cancellation and your account exceeds Free-tier limits, the same "stays over cap, blocks new creates" rule applies. To export your data first, see CSV import and export.
The AI credit pool
Frostbyte's AI features run off a single pooled credit balance per user, refreshed monthly. No per-call charges, no per-feature gating, one number that ticks down.
| Tier | Credits per month |
|---|---|
| Free | 10 |
| Basic | 250 |
| Pro | 1,000 |
| Enterprise | Unlimited (no metering) |
Costs per action are fixed:
| Action | Credits |
|---|---|
| Auto project setup | 5 |
| Release notes generator | 2 |
| Convert feedback to task | 1 |
A 250-credit Basic pool gets you, for instance, 50 auto-bootstraps, or 125 release-notes generations, or 250 feedback conversions, or any mix.
Credit reset cadence
The AI credit pool resets on a different cadence than your subscription:
- Paid plans: the pool resets on your Stripe billing-cycle anchor, whenever your subscription renews. Each user has their own anchor based on signup date. So a Basic user who signed up on the 14th gets credits refilled on the 14th of each month.
- Free plan: the pool resets on the 1st of each calendar month (UTC). There's no Stripe anchor for Free users, so we use a fixed calendar reset.
You can see your remaining balance and the next reset date in account settings under AI credits.
See AI overview for what each AI action does and when to use it.
Failed payments
If a payment fails, Stripe retries on its standard cadence (3 retries over ~21 days). During the retry window, your account stays on its paid tier. If all retries fail, the subscription cancels and your account drops to Free at the end of the cycle.
You'll receive payment-failed emails from the billing email sequence so the failure isn't silent.
Invoices
All invoices are accessible through the Stripe portal. There's no separate "invoices" page in Frostbyte, Stripe is the source of truth for billing history.
For Enterprise tier, custom invoicing is supported (PO numbers, billing contact, custom payment terms). Contact sales for setup.
What's next
- Tier feature breakdown: Plans and limits.
- What each AI action does: AI overview.
- Common questions: FAQ.