Subscriptions and billing

In the Astra Portal, go to Billing to view your organization’s subscription plan, payment method, billing, and usage details.

Workload capacity tiers

Billed charges for Astra DB Classic databases are based on the organization subscription plan as well as each database’s workload capacity tier, units of measure (for Usage), cloud provider, and region.

The cost of an Astra DB Classic database depends on the workload capacity tier you select. Astra DB Classic databases use a single capacity unit (CU) by default, which represents three database instances grouped together as three replicas. Scaling up a database increases costs in accordance with the number of additional CUs.

A database’s workload capacity tier represents the amount of compute power allocated to each CU, with three compute instances per CU. The Astra Portal reports Classic database costs in hourly terms, but actual billed charges are measured in one-minute increments.

Astra DB Classic offers the following three tiers of database workload plans that you can select when you create a database.

Core Workloads (Tier C)

Core workloads offer a balance of disk capacity and performance.

This tier supports VPC peering and multi-region databases.

This tier offers the following workload size plans:

  • C20: 24 vCPU, 96GB DRAM, 500GB Storage

  • C40: 48 vCPU, 192GB DRAM, 500GB Storage

  • C40i: 48 vCPU, 192GB DRAM, 580GB Storage, High IOPS

This tier was previously known as Production Workloads with Dedicated Resources. The C10 plan (12 vCPU, 48GB DRAM, 500GB Storage) is no longer available.

High Density: Core Workloads (Tier D)

High density core workloads offer greater disk capacity and performance than other service tiers.

This tier supports VPC peering and multi-region databases.

This tier offers the following workload size plans:

  • D10: 12 vCPU, 48GB DRAM, 1500GB Storage

  • D20: 24 vCPU, 96GB DRAM, 1500GB Storage

  • D40: 48 vCPU, 192GB DRAM, 1500GB Storage

This tier was previously known as High-Density Production Workloads with Dedicated Resources.

Advanced Workloads (Tier E)

Advanced workloads combine the capabilities of core workloads with the advanced functionality of DSE Search and DSE Graph workloads.

This tier does not support VPC peering.

This tier offers the following workload size plans:

  • E60: 48 vCPU, 366GB DRAM, 2TB Storage

  • E120: 96 vCPU, 768GB DRAM, 2TB Storage

This tier was previously known as Astra DSE Edition Workloads.

Manage your subscription

DataStax offers Free, Pay As You Go, and Enterprise plans, as well as add-on Support plans. Pays As You Go and Enterprise plans are also referred to as paid plans, premium organizations, and qualified organizations. For complete plan details, see the Astra DB Classic pricing page.

  • Free

  • Pay As You Go

  • Enterprise

  • Support

If you are on a Free plan, you can use the Astra Portal to add a payment method and view your organization’s upcoming and past bills, credit balance, and usage details. For information about billing and usage, see Understand your bill.

Upgrade

To upgrade from Free to Pay As You Go, do the following:

  1. In the Astra Portal navigation menu, click Billing.

  2. Click Add a Payment Method, and then complete the form to provide a payment method and upgrade your plan. Pay As You Go plans require a payment method on file.

Marketplace

You can purchase additional credits for Free plans through the following cloud marketplaces:

If you are on a Pay As You Go plan, you can use the Astra Portal to change your payment method and view your organization’s upcoming and past bills, credit balance, and usage details. For information about billing and usage, see Understand your bill.

Change payment method

  1. In the Astra Portal navigation menu, click Billing.

  2. In the Payment Method section, you can add a new payment method. Pay As You Go plans require a payment method on file.

Marketplace

You can purchase credits to fund Pay As You Go plans through the following cloud marketplaces:

Downgrade

To downgrade from Pay As You Go to Free, do the following:

  1. On the Billing page, remove your payment method.

  2. If prompted, remove any premium features you are currently using, including multi-region databases, databases in premium regions, private endpoints, and custom DNS configurations.

    Premium features aren’t available on the Free plan because they incur metered charges and require a payment method on file. If you remove private endpoints or private links, make sure you dismantle those configurations in your cloud provider as well.

  3. If you do not have an outstanding balance, click Remove Payment Method to proceed with the downgrade.

    If you have an outstanding balance, you must wait until the next billing cycle resolves the outstanding balance. Then you can remove your payment method and downgrade your plan.

On an Enterprise plan, you can view billing and usage information in the Astra Portal. For more information, see Understand your bill.

To manage Enterprise subscriptions, contact DataStax through the Astra DB Classic pricing page or your account representative.

DataStax offers add-on Support plans for Pay As You Go and Enterprise plans. To manage a Support plan, contact DataStax through the Astra DB Classic pricing page or your account representative.

Understand your bill

In the Astra Portal, you can view your organization’s upcoming and past bills, credit balance, and usage details:

The Billing page includes the following information.

Estimated bill

The Estimated Bill is based on your usage and credits for the current billing period:

  • For Pay As You Go plans, your Estimated Bill is based on your total usage.

  • For Enterprise plans, if you exceed your credit and committed monthly minimum, the overages are charged at your discounted rate. Your Estimated Bill reflects this amount.

Bills are automatically drafted monthly, based on UTC date and time.

Credits

Credits Remaining reflects your current credit balance for the current billing period:

  • Free plans get $25 in free monthly credits. Credits Remaining reflects your remaining monthly credits.

    Unused free credits don’t roll over to the next month. Free monthly credits reset on the first of every month for all organizations on the Free plan.

    If your credit limit runs low, Astra DB Classic prompts you to add a payment method, and DataStax notifies you by email and in the Astra Portal. If database usage consumes all of your free monthly credits, your organization’s databases are suspended until you add a payment method or wait for the next billing cycle to refresh your monthly credits.

  • Pay As You Go plans can purchase credit packages. Credits Remaining reflects your remaining purchased credits.

  • Enterprise plans require an annual commitment. Credits Remaining includes the balance of any unused credits, along with the committed monthly minimum that is billed in arrears at the end of the month.

Usage

The Databases Usage and Streaming Tenants Usage sections report usage details for individual databases and Astra Streaming tenants. you can inspect individual database and tenant usage in addition to the aggregate details.

Read requests (per 1M)

A Read Request Unit (RRU) is the unit of measure for billing database reads. RRUs are based on the payload of each read query response:

  • A read request that returns up to 4kB of data is considered one RRU.

  • If a request returns more than 4kB of data, additional RRUs are required.

  • If a read request involves server-side filtering or aggregation of data, then the data is measured before the filtering or aggregation takes place. For example, this applies to queries that use the ALLOW FILTERING clause, COUNT function, or GROUP BY clause, and queries that don’t request all columns from a row.
Write requests (per 1M)

A Write Request Unit (WRU) is the unit of measure for billing database writes. WRUs are based on the payload size and other characteristics of each write request:

  • A write request with up to 1kB of data is considered one WRU.

  • If a request has more than 1kB of data, additional WRUs are required.

  • A DELETE request is considered one WRU, regardless of size. There are no additional charges for the TTL delete operation, DROP statements, or TRUNCATE statements.

  • A write index is considered a write request. The write index size and the required WRUs are based on the size of each indexed column (not the size of the index), regardless of the column type.

  • Writes in multi-region configurations are billed for each region written to.

  • Insert, update, and upsert options are treated as write operations and calculated as WRUs.

  • WRUs required for batched writes depend on the size and type. Logged batch writes require additional WRUs by default.

    For example, a single partition unlogged batch write operation with 10 rows where each row contains 1.2kB of data requires 12 WRUs. This is based on the total size of the single partition rows divided by 1kB: (10 rows * 1.2kB)/1kB = 12 WRUs.

    By comparison, a two partition logged batch write operation with 2 rows (one row for each partition) where each row contains 1.2kB of data requires 5 WRUs. This is based on the size per table in the batch (in this case, 2 * 1.2kB = 3 WRUs), plus two additional WRUs for the logged batch operation: (2 * 1.2kB)/1kB + 2 = 5 WRUs.
Storage (GB per month)

Data storage includes all data stored in the database, including the actual data, indexes, and metadata. It is calculated based on logical storage consumption and the greatest amount of data stored in a given month. There are no additional billed charges for standard backups of your data, which are included in the base storage costs.

Storage usage is reported in MB but billed by GB per month.
Data transfer (GB)

Data transfer refers to the transfer of your data out of a database, including data transferred between multi-region replicas to meet the replication factor for the data. Billable units and pricing depend on the scope of the data transfer:

  • Data Transfer - Same Region: The transfer occurs within the same region of a cloud provider network.

  • Data Transfer - Cross Region within Cloud Provider Network: The transfer crosses regions within one cloud provider network.

  • Data Transfer - Internet: The transfer leaves the cloud provider network over the internet.

    Multi-region replication incurs additional charges for network egress between regions, based on the source region. Adding a region incurs a one-time data transfer charges to replicate all data to the newly added region.

    Data transfer usage is reported in MB but billed by GB.
Premium runtime

Certain features incur premium charges, based on hourly runtime. Such features include, but aren’t limited to, the following:

  • Private endpoints and custom DNS

  • Multi-region databases

  • Index Storage Size, based on estimated storage size per month, methods of procedure (MOP) per month, and either one or three availability zones (AZ)

For complete pricing details, see Metering Details on the Astra DB Classic pricing page.

Click Download Usage as CSV to download your usage history for the current month, the prior month, or the prior two months. Usage history is separated by region.

Invoices

In the Invoices and Legacy Invoices sections, you can download consolidated invoices from past billing periods.

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