Billing

Every account has a balance of credit: prepaid usage credit for Wheelmachine alone, counted in your account's currency - pounds, euros or US dollars. Your own account starts with 5 of it in free credit, you buy credit in 10, 25, 50 or 100 of it, and machines' running time is taken from it as they run.

$ wm credit
balance:     $4.87
currency:    US dollars (USD); wm credit currency changes it until your first purchase, or until we change it for you
buy credit:  wm credit buy <10|25|50|100>, or on the dashboard's Billing page

WHEN (UTC)        WHAT                       MACHINE  AMOUNT
2026-11-02        Running time               trainer  -$0.1312
2026-11-02 09:30  Free credit to start with  -        +$5.00

Python

credit = client.credit.get()
print(credit.balance, credit.currency, credit.empty)
for entry in client.credit.entries():
    print(entry.at, entry.kind, entry.amount, entry.machine_name)

TypeScript

const credit = await client.credit.get();
console.log(credit.balance, credit.currency, credit.empty);
for await (const entry of client.credit.entries()) console.log(entry.at, entry.kind, entry.amount, entry.machine_name);

curl

curl https://api.wheelmachine.ai/v1/credit \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $WHEELMACHINE_API_KEY"

In the dashboard, the Billing page shows the same: the balance, and every entry, the newest first.

Your currency#

Your account's credit is counted in one currency: pounds sterling for an account made in the United Kingdom, the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man, euros for one made in the euro area, US dollars for every other. We choose it from the time zone your browser reports when you sign up. The balance, every entry, your limits and our prices are shown in it.

Prices are set in US dollars and shown in pounds and euros at our rates: £0.80 and €0.90 for each $1. A machine with 2 CPUs is $0.08, £0.064 or €0.072 an hour. A new rate applies to what you use from then on, never to credit you already have.

You can change the currency on the Billing page until your first purchase, or until we change it for you; after that it stays, unless it was set wrongly: write to us and we can change it, keeping its value. The credit keeps its value at our rates, and free credit becomes 5 of the new currency; your limits, your teams' budgets and your spend alert are changed to it too. In an organisation, its owners and billing change it, signed in; with a key, it takes one of full access (cloud:*). An organisation starts in the currency of the person who made it.

$ wm credit currency GBP
currency:  pounds sterling (GBP)
balance:   £4.90
change:    wm credit currency <USD|GBP|EUR>, until your first purchase, or until we change it for you

Python

credit = client.credit.set_currency("GBP")

TypeScript

const credit = await client.credit.setCurrency("GBP");

curl

curl -X PUT https://api.wheelmachine.ai/v1/credit/currency \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $WHEELMACHINE_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"currency": "GBP"}'

In India, an account is counted in US dollars and pays for its credit in rupees: ₹890, ₹2,210, ₹4,430 and ₹8,850 for $10, $25, $50 and $100 of credit. The models' prices are their providers' own, in US dollars; in pounds or euros, the dashboard and wm show about what that is beside them.

What comes in#

Free credit: 5 of your account's currency - $5, £5 or €5 - once for each person, in your own account. Signed up with GitHub, you get it at first sign-in. Signed up with Google, you get it once you link a GitHub account at least 30 days old, on Code, under Your accounts. An organisation starts at zero.
Credit you buy, 10, 25, 50 or 100 of your account's currency at a time, from Paddle (below). Credit Paddle refunds to you, or your bank takes back, is taken away again.
Credit we add, with the reason on the entry.

Buying credit#

In the dashboard, open Billing and, under Add credit, choose how much: 10, 25, 50 or 100 of your account's currency. Paddle's checkout is there in the page with it, and you pay there; it shows what you pay, with any tax, before you do. The credit is in your account a few seconds after you pay, once Paddle confirms the payment.

You pay in your account's currency, and get exactly that much credit: £25 buys £25 of credit. In India, an account counted in dollars pays in rupees (above); the pricing page lists the euro area's countries. Tax is added at checkout. A refund is paid in the currency you paid in, and takes back the same share of the credit.

$ wm credit buy 25
amount:  $25.00
pay at:  https://app.wheelmachine.ai/billing?purchase=cp_01jb2xk3n4p5q6r7s8t9v0w1x2

Python

purchase = client.credit.buy(25)
print(purchase.checkout.url)

TypeScript

const purchase = await client.credit.buy(25);
console.log(purchase.checkout.url);

curl

curl -X POST https://api.wheelmachine.ai/v1/credit/purchases \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $WHEELMACHINE_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"amount": 25}'

From wm, a library or the API, you start a checkout and pay it in your browser, signed in to the same account. Nothing is charged until you pay.

Pay within a day of starting. A second or late payment, one of a purchase started before you changed the account's currency, or one that does not match, gives no credit and is refunded.

Paddle is our reseller - the merchant of record: you buy the credit from Paddle, which takes the payment, adds any sales tax or VAT where you are, and e-mails you the receipt and the tax invoice.

In an organisation, its owners and billing buy its credit; its admins see it, and buy none.

What is taken#

A machine's running time, by the second, at its size's price (Sizes; GET /v1/sizes lists each) - what wm usage counts. Once a minute, whatever a machine ran since is taken from the credit, onto one entry for that machine and that day (UTC), which grows until the day ends. A paused, stopped or archived machine takes nothing.

Folders, at $0.03 per GB a month (£0.024, €0.027), counted by the day: each day (UTC) counts the most the account kept in its folders that day, the Trash included, and costs its share of the month - a GB kept every day of a month comes to $0.03. It is taken onto one entry a day, Folders, which grows as that day's most does. wm usage and the dashboard's Usage & limits page say what folders came to in the month (folders). Folders count toward no limit for the month.

Storage is not charged today: machines' disks, backups and archived machines. What a machine ran before credit began is never taken.

An account made before billing began is charged from 30 days after we e-mail its notice, and never before 5 December 2026. charging in GET /v1/credit says from when.

When it runs out#

At zero or below, the account cannot spend. Within about a minute its running machines are paused, with their memory kept, and what was open into them - a terminal, a screen - ends. Making, starting or forking a machine, running a command or reaching a file then answers 402 payment_required: You have no credit left: add enough credit to bring your balance above $0 to start machines. The balance may be a little below zero: the running time of the minute it ran out in is taken too. Once the balance is above zero again, start brings each machine back where it was. (The words say your currency: £0 in an account counted in pounds.)

Its folders turn read-only: files can be read, downloaded and deleted, but nothing can be added or changed (402 payment_required). They are not charged while on hold. We e-mail owners and billing that day, after 7 days and 9 days before the files are deleted. The files are deleted 30 days after the credit ran out, the Trash too; the folders stay, empty. Adding enough credit to bring the balance above zero lifts it at once.

wm me (GET /v1/me) says whether the account can spend, and its credit (standing.credit, in standing.currency).

E-mails#

Those who buy credit are e-mailed when it is added, when it runs low and when it runs out, each in the account's currency: see E-mails.

In an organisation#

An organisation's credit is its own, apart from its people's: their machines there take from it, and from no one's own. It starts at zero, in the currency of the person who made it: its machines run once it has credit. Its owners, admins and billing read it, as they read what its machines cost, and its owners and billing buy it and change its currency until its first purchase, or until we change it for you; a member does neither, and credit is null for them. A key limited to some projects reaches no account's credit. Its people's own limits for the month and its teams' budgets apply as well: whichever comes first stops a machine.

Reading it#

GET /v1/credit gives the balance, whether it is empty, and a page of its entries, the newest first (limit, 1 to 200, and after, the next of the page before). Each entry says its kind - welcome, machine_time, folders, purchase, refund, staff_credit or staff_debit - its amount, above zero for credit put in and below for credit taken, its reason, and for running time the machine and its name. Amounts are in the account's currency, to the millionth. Each *_usd field beside one is the same amount in US dollars at our rate, kept for programs written before it: it is deprecated, so read the field without _usd. See the reference.