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How does credit-based pricing work?

Understand how UpCanary credits work - purchase, consume, and track your monitoring usage.

Credits are the unit of consumption in UpCanary. Every time a check runs - from any region - one credit is used. Understanding how credits work helps you plan your monitoring coverage and manage costs predictably.

How Credits Work

1 credit = 1 check from 1 region.

When a monitor runs with 3 regions selected, it consumes 3 credits per check. A monitor checking every minute across 6 regions uses 6 credits per minute, or 8,640 credits per day.

Credits are deducted from your balance automatically as checks run. If your balance reaches zero, monitors pause until credits are added.

Credit Types

There are three sources of credits:

TypeDescriptionExpiration
Free creditsGranted on signupNever expire
Subscription creditsIncluded monthly with Starter and Pro plansReset each billing cycle
Purchased creditsBought as one-time packagesNever expire

When checks run, subscription credits are consumed first, then purchased credits, then free credits. This ensures your paid monthly allocation is fully used before drawing down your permanent balance.

Credit Balance Dashboard

Go to Settings > Billing to see your current credit status:

  • Current balance - total credits available right now (subscription + purchased + free)
  • Daily burn rate - how many credits your active monitors are consuming per day based on current configuration
  • Estimated days remaining - how long your balance will last at the current burn rate
  • Active monitors - the number of monitors currently running and contributing to the burn rate

This dashboard updates in real time as you add or modify monitors.

Tracking Usage

Daily Usage Chart

The Usage tab under Billing shows a bar chart of credit consumption over the past 30 days. Use this to spot spikes (e.g., a monitor that was temporarily set to a very short interval) or to understand your typical daily usage before buying more credits.

Per-Monitor Breakdown

Below the chart, a table shows each active monitor’s daily credit cost based on its check interval and region count. This helps you identify which monitors consume the most credits and whether you want to adjust their configuration.

For example, a monitor checking every 30 seconds across 6 regions uses 2 checks/min × 6 regions × 60 min × 24 hours = 17,280 credits/day. Switching to a 1-minute interval cuts that to 8,640 credits/day.

Credit Ledger

The Ledger tab shows a full transaction history of every credit event:

  • Credits granted (signup bonus, monthly subscription reset, purchases)
  • Credits consumed (daily totals per monitor)
  • Adjustments (refunds, corrections)

Each entry shows the date, type, amount, and running balance. You can use this to reconcile your usage against expected consumption or to verify that a purchase was applied correctly.