Pricing & billing

TL;DR

• Self-host: free, forever. Run spl serve on your laptop or your own server. No subscription, no usage limits, no telemetry.
• Hosted instance: $25 / month, per instance. Includes a fully-managed <label>.syncropel.com running on the platform's infrastructure, with backups, TLS, and auto-recovery.
• 30-day trial: every new hosted instance gets 30 days free. Card on file required to provision (so the transition to paid is automatic), but no charge during trial.
• Managed inference (api.syncropic.com): optional. If you use it, your subscription includes inline credit; overage bills via Stripe Meter at the end of the month.
• Cancellation: anytime, from your account portal. 7-day grace period during which the instance keeps running at half rate.

You can move freely between self-host and hosted using spl export / spl import — the substrate is portable by design.

What you pay for

Self-host (free)

You run spl serve on hardware you control. Syncropic gets no money, no telemetry, no inspection capability:

• Records, threads, audit logs live in ~/.syncro/hub.db on your machine
• Federation works peer-to-peer; no Syncropic-operated server in the path
• Provider keys (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google) are yours; you bill those directly
• Updates via curl https://get.syncropic.com/spl | sh — single binary, ~10 MB
• License: Apache-2.0; the spec, the kernel, and every SDK are open source

This is how most developers and small teams use Syncropel. The hosted tier is for customers who want zero ops.

Hosted ($25 / month / instance)

Provision a <label>.syncropel.com instance via syncropel.com/signup. What's included:

What's not included on $25/month:

• More than 50 GB of records (contact for high-volume tier)
• More than 60 req/min sustained against the inference gateway (contact for higher rate cap)
• SLA — best-effort 99.5% target, no financial credits at this price point

Managed inference (api.syncropic.com)

If you use the managed inference gateway, it bills against your subscription:

• Each subscription includes $5 / month of credit (~3,800 Haiku-class messages, or ~250 Sonnet-class messages, or ~40,000 Gemini Flash messages)
• Overage bills via Stripe Meter at the end of the month at provider list pricing + 30% gateway markup
• No surprise charges — there's a hard cap of $50 / month per instance; calls beyond that return 402 quota_exceeded and you decide whether to raise the cap

You see your live usage at syncropel.com/account/usage. Every call also emits a record on your th_audit_api_usage thread, so reconciliation is a substrate query.

How billing works

Trial period

When you provision your first hosted instance, a 30-day trial starts immediately:

• Card on file required at provision time
• No charge during trial
• Instance is fully functional throughout
• 7 days before trial ends, an email reminder
• At day 30, your card is charged $25 for the next month

You can cancel any time during trial — no charge, instance is kept available for 7 days as a grace period, then suspended.

Monthly billing

After trial:

1. Day 1 of each month: $25 charged for the month ahead, per instance
2. Inference overage from the prior month bills as a line item on the same invoice
3. Failed payment → 7-day grace period (instance keeps running at half rate cap), then suspended until card is updated
4. After 30 days suspended: instance is decommissioned and data deleted (advance email warning at day 14)

Cancellation

• Self-service: visit syncropel.com/account/billing and click Cancel
• Effective at end of current billing period
• 7-day grace period after period ends — instance keeps running so you can export
• Final invoice for any inference overage from that period
• Full data export via spl export (portability docs)

No questions asked, no retention call.

Refunds

• Trial: nothing to refund (no charge)
• First month after trial: full refund within 7 days if you're unhappy
• Subsequent months: pro-rated refund for unused days if cancellation is for our reason (extended outage, breaking change without migration path, etc.)

The full refund policy is at syncropel.com/refunds.

Self-host ↔ hosted: moving between

Substrate portability (see Actor portability) makes the transition straightforward in both directions.

Self-host → hosted

You've been running spl serve on your laptop and want to move to a hosted instance:

# 1. Export your local instance
spl export --output ~/my-instance.tar.gz

# 2. Provision a hosted instance (gets you a fresh empty <label>.syncropel.com)

# 3. Import your data
SPL_INSTANCE_URL=https://<label>.syncropel.com \
  spl import ~/my-instance.tar.gz

Federation pairs need to be re-established post-import (different DID), but records, threads, and audit logs come along intact.

Hosted → self-host

You're moving off hosted (canceling, sovereignty preference, cost):

# 1. Export your hosted instance (run before canceling)
SPL_INSTANCE_URL=https://<label>.syncropel.com \
  spl export --output ~/migrate.tar.gz

# 2. Install spl locally if you haven't
curl https://get.syncropic.com/spl | sh

# 3. Start a local daemon and import
spl serve --daemon
spl import ~/migrate.tar.gz

# 4. Cancel the hosted subscription at your leisure

You'll lose the <label>.syncropel.com URL (returns to the reservation pool 30 days after instance suspension). Federation peers will need to re-pair against your new local DID.

Self-host vs. hosted: which fits

Most users start hosted (zero-friction onboarding), validate the workflow over a month, then make a deliberate decision about whether sovereignty + free outweighs zero-ops + $25.

See also

• Hosted signup walkthrough — provisioning flow, what to expect during the 60-90s wait
• Install spl on your machine — for self-host or for pairing with a hosted instance
• api.syncropic.com — managed inference gateway details
• Account portal — billing, API keys, usage, instances
• Refund policy — full text