What are credits on Fly.io ... and do I need them?

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1

I am super confused about the pricing structure and what I need to do to ensure my app is running properly without disruption.

Can someone provide a short answer on what a credit does? Do I need to buy them as the “currency” that my usage billing will consume?

I thought from the documentation there are all of these tiers of usage that are billed in 0.0n cents? That is what I am familiar with from other data API subscription services … and not sure how important credits are or fit into the equation.

Searched documentation and didn’t find anything.

Thanks.

2

credits are a way of “pre-paying” for usage. when you use fly machines, your per-second usage is summed up every month into a single invoice. if you have credits, they will be used to pay the invoice first; any remaining cost is charged to your credit card.
if you don’t want (or can’t) get invoices charged to your credit card, you can add credits prior to invoice close instead: https://fly.io/docs/about/billing/#if-you-dont-have-a-credit-card

so tl;dr if you have a working credit card and are ok with getting it charged at the end of each month, you don’t need to think about credits at all.

4

Thank you … so much. It is a bit of a learning trench (not even a curve) to understand the billing for a starter. It seems like there are a lot of Admin assumptions about understanding what xyz means.

Again much appreciated.