Guides
Billing & usage
How HiveBase prices work — what's included, what counts as a task, and how top-ups work.
HiveBase prices on one principle: reads are free. Work you ask for comes out of your plan. Nothing meters what it merely watches. Every run is priced before it starts and pauses at your cap.
The customer unit is a task — one finished job with a named output, confirmed before it starts. Credits stay internal accounting. You never need a credit balance to understand the bill.
- 01A job is proposedNamed output, before it starts
- 02Is it a read?Search · brief · context
- 03If you asked for workCounts as one task
- 04Price shown if over allowanceNothing runs until you confirm
- 01
A job is proposed
Named output, before it starts
- 02
Is it a read?
Search · brief · context
- 03
If you asked for work
Counts as one task
- 04
Price shown if over allowance
Nothing runs until you confirm
What's never metered
Reads never cost a count. You can explore HiveBase and get real value before you spend anything.
- Reading and searching your Brain.
- Browsing tasks, decisions, and your daily FYI.
- Connecting integrations and building context.
- Passive monitoring under the plan cap.
- Upkeep — corrections, decision records, keeping a maintained doc true.
- Desktop routing, steering, Supervisor, review, and verify on a model that did not write the work.
- The first task.
Reads are free on purpose
The Brain only gets more valuable the more it's queried. Searching, asking, and browsing never draw down the work you asked for — so there's no reason to hold back.
What you see
Paid bands include a monthly allowance of tasks, threads, and drafts. Your workspace shows the exact counts. This guide does not publish those numbers — they belong on the pricing page only once the runtime enforces them.
Dollars appear once, on the approval card, before a metered job. Top-up packs never expire. The included monthly allowance renews with the plan. There is no dollar balance that zeroes at renewal.
A task is one finished job with a named output. Subtasks never count. Vendor-fault retries are free. Our-fault failures refund the count; aborting does not. Work on the models and keys you already pay for still counts as a task, with no token markup.
See live pricing
Band prices, people ceilings, and the founding-cohort offer live on the pricing page. Treat it as the commercial source of truth. Per-tool developer metering is in the MCP tool reference.
What happens at a cap
A capacity cap (sources, people, observe volume) pauses syncing and tells you — we never bill. A job cap waits for a top-up; the job does not run until you confirm the price. Nothing is billed silently.
Meeting notes on paid bands are included and pause at the plan ceiling. There is no per-minute customer meter.
FAQ
What costs a count?
Work you ask for: a task with a named output, a forwarded thread beyond the included allowance, a draft beyond the included allowance. Reading and searching your Brain, browsing tasks and FYI, connecting tools, and capturing signals are never metered.
How do I avoid surprises?
Every run is priced before it starts. Over-allowance work shows dollars on the approval card. Pause any time; we never bill you for a run you didn't approve.
What happens if I hit the allowance?
The next metered job waits. It does not run against an empty pool. Top up, or wait for the monthly allowance to renew. Reads stay free.
Where do I find exact prices?
On the pricing page. It's the source of truth for band prices and launch posture — these docs explain the model, not the unpublished counts.