Unkey plans and free tier

Unkey bills two products separately. API Management has a tier and Compute has a plan, and you can have either one without the other. Both use one payment method, and each product bills on its own invoice. Canceling one doesn’t affect the other. Manage both under Settings > Billing. Only admins can change plans or payment details. Everyone else sees the controls disabled with “Admin access required to manage billing”.

Add a payment method

You need a card on file before you can upgrade. Under Settings > Billing, click Add payment method on the Plans card and enter the card in Stripe checkout. Both products charge that card. To see invoices or change the card later, click View invoices on the Plans card. It opens the Stripe billing portal in a new tab.

API Management tier

Every workspace starts on the Free tier at $0 a month, which includes:

• 150,000 billable operations per month
• 1,000 API keys
• 7 days of request log retention
• 30 days of audit log retention

Billable operations are key verifications and rate limit operations. See Usage for what counts. A paid tier raises the monthly quota and the API key allowance, and includes team members. Each tier’s numbers are on Limits and unkey.com/pricing.

Change or cancel the API tier

Choose a tier under Settings > Billing.

• Upgrade. Applies immediately.
• Downgrade or cancel. Takes effect at the end of the current period. The page shows the date, and you can resume your current tier until then. While a cancellation is pending you can’t pick another tier, and you’ll see “Resume your API plan before changing it.”

When a cancellation takes effect, the workspace moves to the free tier, and the free tier’s quota and retention apply.

Compute plan

You need a Compute plan before you can deploy an app. There are three:

• Starter, $5 a month, for hobby projects and testing ideas.
• Pro, $25 a month, for growing apps in production.
• Business, $50 a month, for teams scaling with confidence.

Through December 31, 2026, your first month is $5 off, so Starter’s first month is free. Each user and card can claim this credit once. Every plan includes git push to deploy, a preview environment per pull request, instant rollback, autoscaling, and a monthly usage credit equal to its fee. The plans differ in their resource limits (CPU, memory, disk, replicas, and custom domains), listed on Limits. Pro and Business also include team members, so they give a team to a workspace on the free API tier. Pick a plan under Settings > Billing. Change opens the Compute plans screen. If you try to create a project or deploy without a plan, the dashboard opens the same screen. Usage above the included credit is billed on average actual vCPU and memory (not your configured ceilings), allocated ephemeral disk, public egress, and active keys verified through Compute Key Auth. Details are on Usage and unkey.com/pricing. To cap it, set a monthly spend budget. It emails you at 50, 75, and 100 percent and can stop your usage at 100 percent.

Change or cancel Compute

Choose a new plan on the Compute plans screen under Settings > Billing. The timing is different from the API tier:

• Upgrade. You’re charged the prorated fee difference right away and get more usage credit for the rest of the period.
• Downgrade. Your limits drop right away. The fee difference isn’t refunded, and you keep the usage credit the old fee gave you. The lower fee and credit start at the next renewal.
• Cancel. Click Cancel Compute. It takes effect immediately, not at the end of the period. We tear down your running deployments right away and stop billing further usage. Usage up to that point is billed as normal, and the fee isn’t refunded.

If you pick a Compute plan again before the canceled period ends, we resume that subscription instead of charging a new fee. Picking a higher plan than the one you canceled charges the prorated difference. Your deployments don’t come back on their own, so deploy again once the plan is active.

Startups Program

Startups can apply to the Unkey Startups Program. If your startup has raised less than $5 million, you get:

• $1,000 in credits every month, applied to both API Management and Compute
• Priority support in a dedicated Slack channel
• A 1:1 onboarding session, if it helps you get started
• Hands-on help migrating from your existing platform

If your startup has raised more than $5 million, you get 50% off your API Management and Compute bills instead. The credits or discount last for one year. To apply, fill in the form on the Startups Program page.

What happens to your team when you downgrade

Team members come with any paid API tier, or with Compute Pro or Business. If the workspace loses all of these, we deactivate every member except the one who created the workspace. That happens when:

• A paid API tier ends at the end of its period, and you don’t have Compute Pro or Business.
• You’re on the free API tier and downgrade Compute to Starter or cancel it.