Billing and data usage, explained

Masklabs gives your organization a single monthly data allowance that every credential shares. You pick a plan, its included data becomes your allowance for the cycle, and traffic is metered against it byte for byte. This guide explains how the allowance is granted, when it resets, and what happens when you run low.

Your monthly allowance

You pick a monthly plan (see the pricing page), and its included data becomes your organization's allowance for the billing cycle, priced at that plan's per-GB rate. The allowance is shared: usage on any credential draws from the same pool, and each credential shows its own usage line in the dashboard so you can tell which one is spending it.

Your plan data resets to the full amount at the start of each billing cycle. It refills to the plan's included data, and anything left unused at the end of the cycle expires. Plan data does not roll over.

Custom agreements can include separate non-expiring credit, which is kept until the cycle allowance runs out and survives the cycle boundary. If your organization has credit, it shows as its own line on the billing page.

Buying more mid-cycle: top-ups

If you need more data before your plan renews, buy a prepaid top-up. Top-ups are paid by card through Stripe, price at your plan's per-GB rate, and add to your current cycle's allowance right away. A top-up is an add-on to an active plan, so you need a plan before you can buy one, and each plan caps how much top-up data you can add per cycle (shown on your billing page).

Top-ups are part of the same monthly allowance, so unused top-up data expires at the end of the cycle too, just like plan data. Buy data as you need it rather than stockpiling it near the end of a cycle.

Access follows your subscription

Your credentials pass traffic only while your plan is active and paid through the current period. If the subscription is cancelled or a renewal fails and the period lapses, your credentials are suspended even if data is left in the cycle. The active subscription, not a leftover balance, is what unlocks the network. When a paid renewal lands, your allowance refills and your credentials come back automatically.

Metering is one-to-one

The proxy backend keeps a cumulative usage counter for your organization (it can lag live traffic by roughly ten seconds). A metering job reads that counter on a short recurring interval and measures how much you have used this cycle. One byte of proxied traffic counts as one byte against your allowance. There is no per-request markup and no rounding beyond whole bytes.

What happens when you run out

When your remaining allowance reaches zero, your organization's credentials stop passing traffic until the next renewal refills the cycle or you add a top-up. Because every plan and top-up is prepaid, a runaway job can drain what you have funded for the cycle, but it can never run up a surprise overage invoice. Usage beyond your allowance is simply not served.

Per-credential usage limits (optional)

Beyond the shared organization allowance, you can set an optional daily and/or monthly usage limit (in GB) on any individual credential from its settings in the dashboard. A daily limit resets at midnight UTC; a monthly limit resets at the start of the UTC month. Leave a limit blank for no cap. An uncapped credential is still bounded by the organization's shared allowance; this just adds a tighter per-credential ceiling if you want one, for example to bound what a single CI credential can spend in a day.

Low-balance alerts

When usage drops your remaining allowance below a low threshold, every org owner is emailed a low-balance alert. You get at most one alert per drop below the threshold. The next one only fires after your allowance recovers back above it (a renewal or a top-up) and then drops below it again, so topping up late does not trigger a flood of repeat emails.

Watching usage live

The dashboard shows your organization's remaining allowance and each credential's usage in gigabytes, updating as traffic flows. There is no separate step to "start metering." The moment a request goes through a credential, it is drawing on the allowance you already funded.