# What it costs, before and after

See what an app costs on hover, get a quote before you switch a schedule on, and find out why this month's bill is different from last month's.

URL: https://docs.qaldy.com/guides/costs/

:::preview Preview, and billing is mock
These views read the rate card the console uses. Billing is [mock](https://docs.qaldy.com/concepts/pricing/): nothing is charged, so every figure here is a **list value**, what the use would cost if you bought it as add-on capacity.
:::

Qaldy bills a plan plus any extra capacity you add. It does not bill each run. So the number next to an app is not a charge: it is how the app's use compares with the allowance you already have. While a workspace stays inside its plan, the extra cost is zero, and every tag says so.

## On an app: what it costs

![The What it costs card on an app page.](https://docs.qaldy.com/screens/app-costs.webp "On an app: what it costs this month, against the plan. Sample data, and billing is mock.")

Open an app. The **What this app costs** card shows this month's runs, requests and AI credits for that app, what they list at as add-on capacity in the workspace's currency (dollars, euros or tenge), and where they stand against the plan: "Fits your plan", "Close to the limit" or "Past this month's allowance". If the app or its automation has a [budget](https://docs.qaldy.com/guides/spending-cap/), the card says how much of it is used.

## Before you switch a schedule on: a quote

When you set a schedule on an automation, the editor says, before you save, how many runs it will use in a month and what that does to the allowance: for example "about 2,880 runs a month, 12% of the 25,000 included". It also names any budget the schedule would run through, and warns when some runs would be declined.

- For a **schedule**, runs are counted exactly: every start of the cron in the billing month, in the schedule's own time zone. A month with a clock change in it can be out by the starts of that one hour.
- For a **webhook or an event trigger**, Qaldy cannot know the rate, so the quote uses the rate you state.
- The quote only reads. It changes nothing.

## After: why did my bill change?

Open **Plan and usage** and go to **Why did my bill change?** ([[Preview]]). It answers two questions apart, because they have different causes.

1. **The bill.** Because Qaldy bills a plan plus capacity, the bill moves only when the plan or the added capacity does. The section prices last month and this month from the change log, using the same proration as the invoice preview, and lists every change that moved the difference: a plan switch, capacity added or removed, who did it (a person, autopilot or Qaldy staff) and when. The parts add up to the difference to the cent.
2. **The use.** What ran more or less than in the same days of last month, by app, by automation and by meter, with the runs behind each. Use does not change the bill by itself; it is the reason capacity gets added and the reason a hard cap holds.

![Why did my bill change: the bill, by each plan or capacity change, and what ran more or less than last month.](https://docs.qaldy.com/screens/bill-changes.webp "Why did my bill change? in Plan and usage. Sample data.")

An agent can ask the same rate card with the MCP tool `estimate_cost`: "what would this workload cost a month?"

## What this is not

- It is not an invoice. To put the plan on paper as an invoice and an act, see [Invoices and acts](https://docs.qaldy.com/kazakhstan/invoices/).
- It is not a promise of a price. The plans are a proposal, and the rate card says so.