Billing Terms
Billing Terms
Effective date: July 2, 2026. These Billing Terms supplement the Monocrat Terms of Service and govern Monocrat subscription fees, usage credits, direct charges, invoices, refunds, disputes, and cancellation.
1. Billing Authority
For launch, each tenant has one verified owner-operator account. That owner is the billing authority for subscription decisions, saved payment method changes, invoice access, direct-charge approvals, disputes, cancellation, and billing settings unless Monocrat signs a different written agreement.
2. Base Subscription
| Base subscription | $200/month USD per tenant billing account. |
|---|---|
| Included credits | $200/month USD in Monocrat usage credits each billing period. |
| Purchase currency | All Monocrat subscription, usage-credit, invoice, and direct-charge prices are in U.S. dollars (USD) unless an order form states otherwise. |
| Rollover | Included monthly credits do not roll over and expire at the end of the billing period. |
| Cash value | Credits are not cash, stored value, gift cards, or transferable balances. |
| Billing processor | Stripe processes Monocrat subscription billing, invoices, receipts, payment methods, failed-payment recovery, refunds, disputes, and approved direct charges. |
| Accepted payment methods | Monocrat accepts payment methods made available through Stripe for the billing account, including eligible cards from Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover where supported by Stripe and the card network. |
3. Usage Credits
Monocrat rates billable AI-bearing ingestion, extraction, retrieval, enrichment, and optional processing work into customer-facing Monocrat usage classes. Customer-facing billing surfaces lead with dollar credits, not provider cost or per-call model routing.
Included monthly credits pay down the first $200 USD of rated Standard/Premium usage in the billing period. Credits expire at the billing-period boundary and are not refundable, redeemable, transferable, or convertible to cash.
Credit expiration is not a work trigger. Monocrat does not create, prioritize, accelerate, or re-run optional processing just because credits are expiring.
Monthly Overage Budget
The verified owner may set a monthly overage budget in Billing & Usage or settings. The budget is an authorization cap for additional paid work in the current billing period; it is not a top-up purchase, stored balance, cash value, gift card, wallet, or auto-replenish credit system.
Paid work may run within included credits and the owner-set monthly overage budget when billing systems are healthy. If a requested job would exceed the remaining budget, Monocrat must ask the owner to increase the monthly budget, approve a one-time direct charge for that job, or decline the work before any Stripe authorization or charge. Work also pauses when a billing kill switch or ambiguous billing state is active.
The owner may set a notification threshold for large single jobs that spend against the monthly overage budget. If the threshold is reached, Monocrat records an owner-visible notification with the job identity, estimated amount, and remaining budget. This notification is not an approval gate, and notification-delivery failure does not block work.
4. Launch Rate Card
| Usage class | Customer input rate | Customer output rate | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| standard_tokens | $4.50 / MTok | $22.50 / MTok | Standard AI-bearing work under the active rate-card snapshot. |
| premium_tokens | $7.50 / MTok | $37.50 / MTok | Premium AI-bearing work under the active rate-card snapshot. |
| non_billable_control_plane | $0 | $0 | Billing, account, support, security, credit-state, and settings workflows. |
Rate-card changes are prospective only. Historical invoices, disputes, and audit views use the rate-card snapshot captured when the usage event was reserved or settled.
5. First-Value Bootstrap Allowance
During the first billing period, Monocrat grants a one-time $100 USD bootstrap allowance separate from the monthly included credits. The allowance applies only to required connected-source onboarding sync and initial GraphRAG bootstrap work needed to make core features useful. It expires at the end of the first billing period, does not roll over, and is not refundable.
If a manual upload, unusually large corpus, or optional enrichment job would exceed the remaining bootstrap allowance, included credits, and any owner-set monthly overage budget, Monocrat must show a preflight estimate and require an authenticated owner budget increase, one-time authorization, or decline decision before starting paid work.
6. Direct Charges
Monocrat does not sell stored top-up balances or auto-replenish wallets in v1. If available credits and any owner-set monthly overage budget are insufficient, Monocrat may create a direct-charge intent tied to the exact workflow, estimate, active rate-card snapshot, owner confirmation or prior overage-budget policy, Stripe payment/invoice references, and idempotency key.
Direct charges require authenticated owner web confirmation before Stripe authorization or charge. Email, push, app-link previews, or unauthenticated links may notify or deep-link the owner, but they cannot complete the financial commitment.
For estimate-sensitive work, Monocrat may authorize first and capture only after accepted work. For deterministic fixed-cost work, Monocrat may charge immediately after owner confirmation. Failed, expired, cancelled, or uncaptured intents leave the credit ledger unchanged.
7. Non-Billable Control Plane
Billing and account-control interactions are always non-billable and must not be blocked by credit depletion. This includes billing and usage questions, credit-balance lookups, direct-charge confirmation flows, payment-method management, invoice and receipt retrieval, billing support contact, security alerts, credit-depletion notices, dispute handling, account settings, and billing-admin authorization checks. Support and recovery handling is described in the Support & Admin Access Policy.
8. Defects, Provider Failures, And Reprocessing
Customers are not billed for Monocrat bugs, internal retry loops, duplicate processing, provider failures, failed output validation, or reprocessing caused by implementation defects. Only accepted customer-visible work, or a rerun you explicitly approve after disclosure, may reduce credits or trigger direct-charge capture.
9. Taxes
Prices exclude taxes unless stated otherwise. You are responsible for applicable taxes, duties, assessments, and governmental charges, except taxes based on Monocrat's net income. If Monocrat is required to collect tax, Stripe or Monocrat may add it to the invoice or charge.
10. Refunds, Credits, And Disputes
Subscription fees are generally non-refundable except where required by law, stated in an order form, or approved by Monocrat for billing error, service defect, duplicate charge, failed validation, provider failure, or dispute resolution. Unused included monthly credits and bootstrap allowance are not refundable cash balances.
Billing disputes should be submitted through Billing & Usage, support, or billing@monocrat.ai. Monocrat may place disputed usage or charges under review, issue operator credits, refund credits, dispute credits, voids, or Stripe refunds where appropriate, and preserve non-billable support access while the dispute is reviewed.
Monocrat targets acknowledgement of billing disputes within 5 business days and either resolution or a status update within 30 days unless a payment-network, provider, legal, tax, security, or source-evidence dependency requires more time. Review evidence may include the rate-card snapshot, usage event, source refs, owner confirmation, idempotency key, invoice, receipt, Stripe record, support case, and audit entries. Corrections are recorded as append-only invoice, adjustment, void, refund, dispute, or credit records rather than silent ledger rewrites.
See the Refund, Cancellation & Service Delivery Policy for the standalone refund, cancellation, dispute, and digital delivery disclosure.
11. Failed Payments And Suspension
If a payment fails, Monocrat may retry payment through Stripe, ask the owner to update the payment method, pause new paid work, suspend optional paid background work, or suspend the paid service after notice where reasonable. Billing, support, security, account settings, deletion, dispute, and credit-state control-plane paths remain available.
12. Cancellation
The verified owner may cancel through Billing & Usage, settings, Stripe Customer Portal if available, or support. Cancellation stops future subscription renewal according to the cancellation flow shown at the time of cancellation. It does not convert unused included credits, bootstrap allowance, operator credits, refund credits, or dispute credits into cash or stored value.
Final invoices, unresolved direct charges, refunds, disputes, and account deletion or retention requests route through Stripe, Billing & Usage, support, and legal evidence as applicable.
13. Monocrat Billing vs. Tenant Payment Sources
Stripe is Monocrat's processor for Monocrat subscription billing. Separate tenant Stripe, Square, Shopify/Shopify Payments, Plaid, manual/POS exports, and Moov connections are customer-authorized business sources or payment rails for your own business workflows. They are not Monocrat subscription billing processors unless expressly stated. See the Payment Rail Terms for customer-authorized outbound payment workflows.
14. Changes
Monocrat may update these Billing Terms or the rate card prospectively by posting an updated version or notifying you through another reasonable channel. Material paid-plan changes apply no earlier than the next billing period unless you approve them earlier or they are required by law, provider changes, or security obligations.