Billing
When the card is charged, how invoices work, what the free credit covers, and how the prepaid AI balance works.
FoPost bills like a utility: connected accounts are metered daily, credited monthly, and charged to the card on file, while AI and X API calls come out of a prepaid balance as you use them. What you pay for is on the Pricing page; this page is about when and how the money actually moves.
The billing account
Charges land on one billing account: yours, or the workspace owner's when someone else pays. Everything on this page is per billing account: an agency's workspaces and members share one allowance, one free credit, one balance, one invoice. The billing email and payment method live at Settings → Billing, the balance at Settings → AI Usage, and past invoices are in the billing portal.
Daily metering
Each day, every connected account is metered as one account-day into a usage ledger: one line per workspace per day. The graduated rate applies to your total account count, and the cost is split across workspaces in proportion, which is why the invoice can itemize by workspace.
Metering daily is what makes proration automatic: connect an account on the 20th and you pay for the days from the 20th; disconnect one and it stops accruing that day. There is nothing to cancel and no partial-month arithmetic to request.
AI and X API usage are recorded in the same ledger in dollars as you use them, so the usage page shows everything in one place, but they are paid differently: from the prepaid balance below, never on the invoice.
The free credit
Every billing account gets a $15 usage credit each month. It is applied to the invoice, against connected-account and storage fees, before anything is charged. It refreshes each calendar month and does not roll over. It does not fund AI; the balance does.
Two free connected accounts plus the monthly credit is why light usage never produces a charge at all: an invoice that comes to $0 after credit is simply waived.
The card gate
Your first 2 connected accounts need no card. Connecting a third asks you to save a payment method first: the request answers with payment_method_required until one is on file. Saving the card is a setup step through our payment processing provider; nothing is charged for the card itself, and card details never touch FoPost's own systems. The first card you save starts your balance with $3 and switches auto-reload on.
When the card is charged
Two triggers, both automatic:
- Monthly close. On the 1st, the previous month's ledger becomes an itemized invoice (account-days and storage overage per workspace, minus the free credit), and the remainder is charged to the card on file
- Mid-month threshold. As protection against fraud and surprise balances, accrued usage past a threshold is charged when it accrues rather than waiting for month-end. The threshold starts at $10 and doubles with each successfully paid charge (up to $500), so established accounts see fewer, larger charges; a failed payment resets it to $10
If a charge fails, the invoice is retried at the next monthly close. Fix the card in the billing portal and it clears itself.
The prepaid balance
AI actions and X API calls cost real money the moment they run, so they are paid up front from a balance rather than billed after the fact. Every AI action and every metered X call is deducted from the balance as it happens, and the balance never goes below zero: when it is empty, AI pauses and automated X reads (inbox polling, analytics collection, competitor tracking) stop until it is funded. Publishing, scheduling, and the inbox for every other network keep working.
Funding the balance:
- Add funds at Settings → AI Usage, or from the drawer that opens whenever an action needs a balance. Top-ups are whole dollars from $5 to $500, charged to the card on file immediately, each with its own receipt. Funds never expire.
- Auto-reload charges the card automatically whenever a deduction leaves the balance below a floor you set (by default, $10 whenever it drops below $2). It is on from the moment you save a card and can be turned off or retuned at any time. A single action larger than the balance triggers one reload before it runs rather than being refused.
- Starter balance. The first card saved on a billing account adds $3 once.
Auto-reload never runs past your monthly total spend cap, and a monthly AI spend cap stops AI at the amount you chose regardless of balance.
When AI is declined (empty balance, or a cap reached), the API answers 402. It is not a rate limit: add funds, turn on auto-reload, or raise the cap. See AI in the API.
Leftover credit packs
Credit packs are no longer sold. If you bought packs before the usage model, their value was converted into the prepaid balance at the price you paid, and it is spent on AI and X calls like any other funds.