Pricing should be the least interesting thing about the software you use. For a while, ours wasn't. We asked people to predict their usage, start a countdown, and enter a card before they had run anything. So we took all of that out. The new model is a monthly free allowance on every account, one public rate card for the three things we meter, and prepaid credit (or enterprise commitments) if you want a discount.
What we heard
The clearest feedback we got since launch wasn't about a feature. It was about how we asked people to pay.
Trials create deadlines. A countdown turns "let me evaluate this properly" into "let me cram this in before the clock runs out." That is the opposite of the careful, repeatable work our users do with their data — a field campaign doesn't fit neatly inside 14 days, and neither does deciding whether a platform is right for it.
Plans create guesswork. Choosing a tier up front means predicting your usage months before you understand it, then re-choosing every time a project grows or quiets down. Every one of those re-choices is a conversation nobody wanted to have.
And nobody wants to enter a card just to look. Asking for payment details before someone has run a single pipeline is a strange way to earn trust.
None of that reflected our principles nor how Datasparks actually gets used. So we changed it.
The new model
There are no plans, no tiers, and no trials. Here is the whole thing:
Every account includes a monthly free allowance, with no credit card. The allowance resets on the 1st of each month.
When you need more, add a payment method. The same projects keep working. Usage beyond the free allowance is billed at the published per-unit rate. There is nothing to upgrade, nothing to migrate, and no plan to choose. The free allowance doesn't go away when you start paying. You pay for what you use above it each month.
Pay less by paying ahead. Buy usage credit in advance (larger packs carry more bonus credit) and credit is drawn down before your card is ever charged.
What we meter, and what it costs
Only three things are billing metered: compute, storage, and AI actions. This is the entire rate card.
| Meter | Unit | Free each month | Rate above the allowance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Compute | compute-hour | 5 | $0.28 / hr |
| Storage | GB-month | 5 | $0.80 / GB-mo |
| AI actions | AI credit | 20 | $0.09 / credit |
Everything else is included, not metered for money: team members, connectors, data products, dashboards, scheduled connectors, map and chart studios. There is no feature you unlock by paying for it. Paying for Datasparks buys capacity, not permission.
Prepaid credit works the same way for everyone, at three default sizes:
| Pack | You pay | You get | Bonus |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small | $50 | $50 | — |
| Medium | $200 | $220 | 10% |
| Large | $500 | $600 | 20% |
Credit spends against all three meters, not one. It expires 12 months after purchase, oldest credit first, and we warn you 30 days and 7 days before any of it lapses.
If we change a published rate, you get at least 30 days' notice before it takes effect. Credit you have already bought is unaffected, a purchased dollar stays a drawable dollar.
The principles behind the change
We wanted the way you pay to match the way the product works: quietly, predictably, so simple you wonder how we do it, and on your terms.
Pay only for what you use. No reserved capacity you might not need, no plan you have to grow into, no base platform fee. The free allowance covers real work, and beyond it you're billed by the unit at a rate you can read off a page before you sign up.
See exactly which project spent it. An account is the billing home, with one payment method, one credit balance, and one monthly allowance shared across its projects. Spend is itemized per project, so a team can always see where the usage actually went, without jumping between separate accounts to manage it all.
You set the caps, and we don't. You can set a hard monthly spending cap on any project, whenever you like, and change it whenever you like. Free-allowance usage never counts against it. Datasparks imposes no surprise stop on a paying account, the only hard stop on your spending is one you chose, project-by-project.
That last one is a deliberate asymmetry, and worth being blunt about: a cap is a tool we give you, not a lever we hold. We don't set spending limits on paying customers, and we don't have per-account rate deals that quietly make the published rate a fiction. One public rate card, the same for everyone. Make a commitment to us for future usage, and we'll cut you a deal.
If you reach the free allowance
It isn't a dead end, and it isn't a sales trap (well, maybe a little bit, but because the app is awesome and you want to use it more, not because we're trying to trick you). Your data stays readable and exportable, as only the metered actions pause. There are always three ways forward, and we show all three together rather than picking one for you:
- Add a payment method. Usage beyond the allowance bills at the per-unit rates above.
- Buy a credit pack. Prepaid credit is drawn down first, at a discount.
- Wait for the reset. Your allowance returns on the 1st.
Waiting is a legitimate answer. Plenty of work fits inside the free limits, and if yours does, we're content to be the tool you use for free and tell people about.
If a payment fails
Payment failures are usually an expired card, not a decision. So the response is graduated, and it starts by doing nothing at all.
You get a full week of completely unchanged access while emails go out and the retry runs. After that, new resource-consuming work pauses, but reading, viewing, and exporting keep working. Fixing the payment or buying a credit pack with any card restores everything immediately, with no reapplication and no support ticket. Nothing is deleted for a payment failure without plenty of warnings first, and your projects stay readable and exportable the entire time.
We would rather carry a lapsed card for a while than be the reason someone loses access to a season's worth of field data.
That's the whole model
A monthly free allowance on every account. Three metered things with public rates. Prepaid credit if you want a discount. Caps you control. No plans, no tiers, no trials, no card just to look around.
We think it gets out of your way, which is exactly where pricing belongs.