How overage works
Your plan reserves a monthly commit on each axis. Usage inside the commit is included in the base fee. Usage past it bills at the same unit rate. Here's how it's metered, timed, and shown.
Metering
Every billable event increments a counter on a per-merchant, per-period usage document. Counters reset at the start of each billing period (monthly on the anniversary of your subscription start, or yearly if you're on annual).
Counters are weighted, not raw: a search that hits the vector cache costs less than one that goes through full enrichment. The meters on the billing page show both numbers — raw total and weighted — so you can see what counts against your plan.
Axis behavior
Search
Overage is automatic. Shoppers don't know about your commit and shouldn't be rate-limited by it. Past-commit traffic keeps serving, and bills at your tier's unit rate.
Ingest
Overage is automatic. Catalog changes you make via the API (or the dashboard) keep going through past your commit.
Intelligence
Overage is opt-in per merchant. Intelligence ops fire from dashboard-side actions — opening Gaps, loading the Map, refining the catalog taxonomy, running a Product Placement — so it's easy to accidentally burn through the commit just by exploring. To avoid silent billing, the default is: once you're at commit, intelligence surfaces return 429 and pause until next period. Toggle overage on from your billing settings if you want them to keep working.
Spending cap
You can set a hard dollar cap on extra usage charges for the period. Once you've accumulated that much overage, requests return 429 until the period rolls over or you raise the cap. Your base fee still bills.
Where it shows up
- The billing page shows a live meter for each axis and a preview of the next invoice.
- Stripe's customer portal (linked from the billing page) shows invoice line items with the exact per-unit rate applied.
- Each axis that went over commit this period shows as its own line on the invoice, with quantity and amount.