How billing works & managing your card

Everything about paying for leancosts: how you’re priced, how to add or update a card, and what happens if a payment doesn’t go through.

How you’re priced

leancosts is one plan, billed on the cloud spend it monitors — never on the savings it finds. Each month falls into a band based on your monitored spend, and the band has one flat price. A spike inside a band changes nothing; only crossing into the next band changes what you pay, and then it’s that band’s flat price. You always see this month’s band and a live estimate in Admin → Workspace → Subscription.

The largest tier (Enterprise) is sales-led — we’ll set that up with you directly. The smallest tier is free while your monitored cloud spend stays under the Micro band edge (< $2k / < R$10k per month) — no card required. When you grow past the edge, you move to the Starter band. Trials above the edge get a 7-day full-access window on their first completed sync (once per cloud account) before the subscribe decision.

Adding a card

Find it in Admin → Workspace → Subscription.

1. Once your monitored spend reaches a paid band, the plan card shows Add a card to activate.
2. That takes you to Paddle’s secure hosted checkout — our payment provider (and merchant of record). Enter your card there.
3. We never see or store your card number. leancosts only keeps a reference to your account at Paddle and your subscription status.

After checkout, your subscription shows as active and your card is billed automatically each month for your band’s price.

Note

On the free tier there’s nothing you have to activate: the Subscription page shows your free plan, its limits, and the band edge, and the add-a-card step appears by itself when your monitored spend grows past the edge into a paid band. Prefer to pay anyway? The same page offers Subscribe to Starter — an optional paid subscription at the Starter price, entirely your choice.

Updating your card or canceling

When your subscription is active, the Subscription page links to Manage billing — Paddle’s secure portal, where you can update your card or payment details. To cancel, use Cancel subscription on the same page; your workspace and history are kept if you come back.

What happens if a payment fails

Nothing scary, and nothing sudden.

• We’ll show a calm heads-up on the Subscription page: your last payment didn’t go through.
• Your access is unaffected while we sort it out — the product doesn’t lock.
• The card is automatically retried over the next few days.
• If your card changed, use the update-card link in that notice (Paddle’s portal) and the next retry will pick it up.

If everything stays unresolved after the retries, we’ll reach out — there’s never a silent lockout.

A note on Brazil (BRL)

If your workspace is billed in BRL, your card is handled by Asaas — our Brazilian payment provider — instead of Paddle. The flow is the same: once you reach a paid band you’ll see Adicionar cartão para ativar, which opens Asaas’s secure hosted checkout, and we never see or store your card number. Asaas also issues your NFS-e (nota fiscal de serviço) automatically for each charge — the download link appears in the same Subscription view once the nota is authorized. While the local card rail is being switched on you may still settle invoices directly with the leancosts team; either way your plan, estimate, and invoice history stay in the same place.