Billing options for TIR Virtual Machines

A TIR Virtual Machine’s own charges are its plan and its disk above the free 30 GB. The plan is the vCPUs, memory, and GPUs the VM runs on. You choose how the plan is billed when you create the VM, under VM Pricing. The choices are On-Demand, with a price per hour, or a committed term paid upfront. Datasets and shared file systems you mount, a reserved IP, and snapshots are billed on their own. See What is billed separately.

The rates for every plan are on E2E’s pricing page, and you see each plan’s price before you launch. To estimate the cost of a plan, storage, and hours of use, use the E2E Pricing Calculator.

On-Demand: billed by the minute

An On-Demand VM is billed by the minute at its plan’s hourly price. TIR counts each minute, rounding the start and the end up to the next minute. Billing starts each time the VM becomes ready and stops when you stop or delete it. The time a VM spends waiting or launching is free.

What happens to the VM	What happens to the plan’s billing
A new VM shows Waiting while it launches	Not billed
It becomes ready and shows Running	Billing starts
You stop it, and it shows Stopped	Billing for the plan stops
You start it again and it is ready	Billing starts again
You restart it	The downtime is not billed
You delete it	Billing stops at that moment

For example, a VM that runs for 20 minutes and is then stopped is billed for 20 minutes, one third of the plan’s hourly price. Run it again the next day for two hours, and those two hours are added. The plan charge for the night it spent stopped is zero.

You can change an On-Demand VM’s plan while it is stopped. See Change the plan of a VM.

Committed: one term, paid upfront

A committed plan bills a whole term in one charge, at a lower price than On-Demand. The terms are named for their length: 1 Month Savings Plan, 3 Month Savings Plan, 6 Month Savings Plan, 1 Year Savings Plan, 2 Year Savings Plan, and 3 Year Savings Plan, and not every plan offers every length. A term’s price covers the whole period, so you can compare what each term saves.

When you launch on a committed term, you accept in Committed Plan Confirmation that the full amount for the committed days is charged upfront and that no refund is given for the remaining days.

How a committed VM is billed:

• The term starts, and its full price is taken from your prepaid balance, when the VM first becomes ready. For an hourly VM you convert, the term starts at the conversion.
• That one payment covers compute for the whole term.
• A committed VM runs for the whole term. You can restart it, but not stop or start it.
• You can delete it during the term. You have already paid for the whole term, so the charges stay as they are, and nothing is refunded for the remaining days.
• The plan stays the same for the term. Only what happens at the end can change.
• Its disk is billed the same way as an hourly VM’s disk.

For example, a VM launched on 1 Month Savings Plan is charged the plan’s full price once, when it first becomes ready. It then runs to the date shown in Committed Upto under Plan Details with the plan already paid for, and what happens next follows the renewal choice you made.

You can move an hourly VM to a committed term and keep the same VM. See Convert a VM to a committed plan.

What happens when a committed term ends

You choose what happens when the term ends. The same three choices have different names when you launch and when you convert. At launch the first one is the default; when you convert, you pick one yourself.

On the launch dialog	On the convert dialog	What happens when the term ends
Auto renewal of this committed plan	Auto Renewal	Buys the same plan again for a new term when your prepaid credits cover it. Otherwise the VM switches to hourly billing and TIR emails the owner.
Auto start hourly billing for this machine	Convert to Hourly Plan	Keeps the VM running and bills it per hour, at the plan’s hourly price.
Auto deletion of this committed machine	Auto Delete	Deletes the VM when the term ends. A VM’s disk is deleted with it, so copy out anything you need first.

To change the choice during the term, see Change the plan of a VM. Before the term ends, TIR emails the VM’s creator and the account’s primary contact as a reminder.

What a stopped VM costs

Stopping an hourly VM ends its plan charge. Its disk above 30 GB is still billed, from the moment the VM first became ready until you delete it, including while it is stopped. To end the disk charge, delete the VM. See Delete a VM.

Disk charges

The first 30 GB of a VM’s disk are free. Each GB above 30 is billed per hour. When you enlarge the disk, the old charge ends and the new one starts at the larger size from that moment. A disk can only grow. See Resize the disk of a VM.

Credit needed to launch, start, or convert

On a prepaid account, TIR checks your credit first:

• Launching an hourly VM needs credit for about 24 hours of the plan. With less than that, the launch fails with an Insufficient Credits message that says how many credits to buy.
• Launching a committed VM needs credit for the full committed price.
• Launching several VMs at once checks the credit for the whole batch before any VM is created, and each VM’s own launch checks again.
• Starting a stopped VM, or changing its plan, checks that your balance has credit for the plan.
• Converting an hourly VM to committed takes the full committed price.

A VM on a private cluster skips the credit check at launch, and the private cluster plan covers its plan charge.

What is billed separately

Datasets and shared file systems you mount are billed under their own products, and they keep billing until you delete them. Deleting a VM detaches them and keeps them. A reserved IP is billed on its own, with a monthly fee. Snapshots are billed for the storage they hold, for as long as the snapshot exists. They stay when you delete the VM. See Delete a VM.

SSH keys, security groups, and startup scripts are free. For short answers on charges, see the TIR Virtual Machine FAQ.