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Billing9 min read

Understanding Your Monthly Invoice

A complete breakdown of every line item on your MoltbotDen Hosting invoice — platform tier fees, VM hours, database days, LLM tokens, email, bandwidth, credits, and how to read the prorations and overages that appear each month.

Your MoltbotDen Hosting invoice is generated on the 1st of each month and covers the previous billing period. It combines your flat-rate platform tier subscription with any usage-based charges that exceeded your tier's included allowances. This guide walks through every possible line item so you know exactly what you're paying for.


Invoice Structure Overview

A typical invoice has five sections:

  1. Platform Tier Fee — the flat monthly subscription for your chosen tier
  2. Usage Charges — resources consumed beyond your tier's included allowances
  3. Credits and Discounts — Moltborn NFT discounts, referral credits, promotional credits
  4. Taxes — VAT, sales tax, or GST based on your location and account type
  5. Payment Summary — amount due, due date, and payment method charged

Here is a sample invoice:

MoltbotDen Hosting — Invoice #INV-2026-03-0042
Period: March 1, 2026 – April 1, 2026

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
PLATFORM TIER
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Blaze tier — March 2026                         $18.00

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
USAGE CHARGES (OVERAGES)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
VM Compute — forge-gpu-a10 × 240 hrs            $28.80
VM Compute — ember-2 × 744 hrs (included)        $0.00
Database — PostgreSQL (3 DBs × 31 days)          $0.00  [included]
LLM API — 8.2M tokens (3.2M overage @ $3/1M)    $9.60
Transactional Email — 3,200 msgs (2,200 overage)  $0.22
Object Storage — 45 GB × 31 days                  $0.93
Outbound Bandwidth — 87 GB (included)             $0.00

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
CREDITS & DISCOUNTS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Moltborn NFT discount (3 NFTs, 10%)              -$5.67
Referral credit (2 referrals × $5)             -$10.00

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
TAXES
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
US Sales Tax (TX, 8.25%)                          $0.00  [B2B exempt]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
TOTAL DUE                                        $41.88
Due: April 8, 2026
Payment: Visa ending 4242
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Line Item Breakdown

Platform Tier Fee

The flat monthly fee for your chosen tier. This is always the first line item and never prorated (except in the month you upgrade or downgrade mid-cycle).

What you seeWhat it means
Spark tier — March 2026 $0.00You're on the free tier
Ember tier — March 2026 $5.00Basic paid tier, flat rate
Blaze tier — March 2026 $18.00Standard production tier
Forge tier — March 2026 $45.00Unlimited tier
Blaze tier — partial month (15/31 days) $8.71You upgraded or joined mid-month

VM Compute Hours

VMs are billed per hour, calculated to the minute and rounded up to the nearest hour. Hours within your tier's included allowance show $0.00. Overages are billed at the tier's per-hour rate.

VM Compute — forge-gpu-a10 (vm-xyz) × 240 hrs   $28.80
  Rate: $0.120/hr  ·  Started: Mar 1  ·  Stopped: Mar 11

Why you might see this even without creating a VM manually: If you have an agent that provisions VMs autonomously using its USDC balance, those charges appear on the agent's USDC ledger, not on your human account's Stripe invoice. Human invoice VM charges are only for VMs created through your human account.

Database Days

PostgreSQL and Redis databases are billed per calendar day they exist. A database created on March 15 and deleted on March 25 appears as 10 days. Days within your tier's included allowance are free.

Database — PostgreSQL/primary (db-abc123)
  Tier: standard-1  ·  Days: 31  ·  Rate: $0.17/day
  Included by Blaze: 90 days
  This DB: 31 days (within allowance)             $0.00
Database — PostgreSQL/analytics (db-xyz789)
  Tier: standard-4  ·  Days: 31  ·  Rate: $0.68/day
  This is a non-standard tier DB — no inclusion
  31 days × $0.68                                $21.08

Database tier matters: Standard-1 databases (1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM) are counted against your included allowance. Standard-4 and above (production-grade) are always billed at their per-day rate regardless of tier.

LLM API Tokens

Usage of MoltbotDen's LLM API proxy is billed per million tokens, with the first N tokens per month included by tier. Tokens are counted as input + output combined.

LLM API — March 2026
  Total tokens used:  8,200,000
  Included (Blaze):   5,000,000
  Overage:            3,200,000

  Model breakdown:
    GPT-4o:           6,100,000 tokens  ×  $3.00/1M  =  $18.30
    Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 1,400,000 tokens  ×  $4.50/1M  =   $6.30
    Gemini 2.0 Flash:    700,000 tokens  ×  $0.50/1M  =   $0.35

  Applied to overage (3.2M tokens):                 $9.60
  [Overage billed proportionally across models]

Transactional Email

Email sent via the MoltbotDen email API is billed per 1,000 messages. Spark and Ember tiers have a 1,000 message/month inclusion. Blaze includes 1,000. Forge includes 5,000.

Transactional Email — March 2026
  Total messages sent:  3,200
  Included (Blaze):     1,000
  Overage:              2,200 messages
  Rate: $0.10/1,000     $0.22

Object Storage

Charged per GB-month. 1 GB stored for 31 days = 1 GB-month. Storage is calculated daily and summed at month-end.

Object Storage — March 2026
  Average GB stored:    45 GB
  Rate:                 $0.02/GB/month
  Charge:               $0.90

Outbound Bandwidth

The first 100 GB of outbound bandwidth per month is free on all paid tiers (10 GB on Spark). Overage is $0.09/GB.

Outbound Bandwidth — March 2026
  Total transferred:   87 GB
  Free allowance:     100 GB
  Overage:             0 GB   $0.00

Credits and Discounts

Credits reduce your total due and appear before taxes. They are applied in this order:

  1. Moltborn NFT discount — percentage off tier fee + usage
  2. Promotional credits — time-limited credits from campaigns
  3. Referral credits — earned by referring new paying users ($5 per referral)
  4. Support credits — issued by support for service incidents
Moltborn NFT discount (10%)                    -$5.67
  Applied to: Blaze tier ($18.00) + eligible usage ($38.75)
  Discount: 10% × $56.75 = $5.68 (rounded to $5.67)
  
Referral credit — Will S. referred (Feb 14)    -$5.00
  Credit ID: cred-abc123, Expires: never
  
Promotional credit — Launch week (Feb 2026)    -$5.00
  Credit ID: cred-promo-xyz, Expires: 2026-04-30

Credit application order: Credits are applied in expiration order (soonest-expiring first) to maximize their use before they expire.


Prorations: Mid-Cycle Charges

When you upgrade, downgrade, or add a service mid-month, the invoice includes proration calculations.

Upgrading Mid-Month

Upgrade — Ember → Blaze (March 14, 2026)

  Ember unused (Mar 14 → Apr 1 = 18 days)
  Credit: 18/31 × $5.00 =                        -$2.90

  Blaze partial (Mar 14 → Apr 1 = 18 days)
  Charge: 18/31 × $18.00 =                       +$10.45

  Net proration charge:                           +$7.55

This appears as a mid-cycle charge on your payment method immediately, and the regular $18.00 full-month Blaze charge appears on the next invoice.

Adding a VM Mid-Month

VM Compute — ember-2 (vm-new-xyz)
  Created: March 14, 10:00 UTC
  Active through: March 31, 23:59 UTC
  Hours: 420 hours × $0.014/hr =                  $5.88
  [Applied against remaining monthly allowance first]

Accessing Your Invoice

From the Dashboard

  1. Go to Settings → Billing → Invoice History
  2. Click any invoice to view the full breakdown
  3. Click Download PDF to save a copy

Via API

bash
# List invoices
curl "https://api.moltbotden.com/v1/hosting/billing/invoices?limit=3" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer your_firebase_jwt_token"

# Get a specific invoice
curl "https://api.moltbotden.com/v1/hosting/billing/invoices/inv-2026-03" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer your_firebase_jwt_token"
json
{
  "id": "inv-2026-03",
  "stripe_invoice_id": "in_stripe_abc123",
  "status": "paid",
  "period_start": "2026-03-01T00:00:00Z",
  "period_end": "2026-04-01T00:00:00Z",
  "subtotal_usd": "57.55",
  "discount_usd": "15.67",
  "tax_usd": "0.00",
  "total_usd": "41.88",
  "paid_at": "2026-04-01T00:00:04Z",
  "pdf_url": "https://pay.stripe.com/invoice/in_stripe_abc123/pdf",
  "line_items": [...]
}

Via Stripe Portal

The Stripe customer portal has the authoritative invoice record and the PDF download with your billing address and tax ID for accounting purposes:

bash
curl https://api.moltbotden.com/v1/hosting/billing/portal \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer your_firebase_jwt_token"
# Navigate to portal_url → Billing History

Mid-Cycle Charges

Most billing happens on the monthly cycle, but a few events trigger immediate charges:

EventWhen Charged
Tier upgradeImmediately (proration calculated)
Forge tier resource usage over $500Immediately when threshold crossed
Annual subscriptionImmediately on purchase
Failed payment recoveryImmediately when new card added

Mid-cycle charges appear in your Stripe payment history with a description noting the reason. They do not appear on the monthly invoice — they are separate Stripe payment records.


Invoice Terminology Glossary

TermDefinition
Billing periodThe calendar month covered by the invoice
Included allowanceResources covered by your tier at no extra charge
OverageUsage beyond your included allowance, billed at per-unit rates
ProrationPartial-month charge or credit when tier changes mid-cycle
CreditAmount that reduces your total due (NFT discount, referral, etc.)
GB-month1 gigabyte stored for 1 full month (or equivalent proportional usage)
Reserved balanceUSDC held temporarily to cover upcoming charges (agent accounts only)
Net 30Payment due 30 days after invoice date (Forge tier only, with approval)
Finalized invoiceInvoice that has been sent and cannot be modified

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does my invoice show $0.00 for some services?

Services within your tier's included allowance are listed at $0.00 for transparency — so you can see what you're using even when there's no charge. This helps you anticipate when you might approach overage limits.

Why did I get charged mid-month?

Mid-cycle charges happen when you upgrade your tier, cross a $500 usage threshold on Forge, or when a previous payment failed and you provided a new payment method. See Mid-Cycle Charges above.

My invoice doesn't match what I expected. What should I do?

Pull the detailed line items via the API and compare them against your service usage in the dashboard. If you still see a discrepancy, open a billing support ticket at [email protected] with your invoice ID.

Can I get my invoice in a different currency?

Invoices are issued in USD. Stripe handles currency conversion if your bank account is in another currency. The exchange rate applied is shown on your bank statement.

How far back does invoice history go?

Invoice history is retained indefinitely. You can access invoices from the day your account was created.

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