What happens when my project goes over its included downloads?
Short answer: it depends on the CDN. Pro CDN and private downloads above the included amount are billed automatically in blocks on your next invoice. They are never blocked, so there is nothing to buy in advance. Standard CDN downloads are a limit: a project on a paid plan that goes clearly beyond it is blocked until you upgrade or the next invoice is paid (on Enterprise you can buy additional blocks instead), and on the Free plan its translations are unpublished.
What counts as one download is explained on a page of its own.
By download type
| Download type | Included | Above the included amount |
|---|---|---|
| Pro CDN | Every plan from Growth upward | Billed automatically in blocks of 100,000 on your next invoice. Never blocked. |
| Private (namespaces loaded with an API key) | Every plan from Growth upward | Billed automatically in blocks of 10,000 on your next invoice. Never blocked. Free, Starter and Starter Plus include none, so these requests are refused there. |
| Standard CDN | Every plan | A limit. A project on a paid plan that goes clearly beyond it is blocked until you upgrade or the next invoice is paid; on Enterprise you can buy additional blocks of 1,000,000 instead. On the Free plan the translations are unpublished. |
The included amounts per plan and the price of each block are on the pricing page. Standard-download blocks bought on Enterprise stay on every monthly invoice until you remove them under Overages, or until the project moves to a lower plan.
The emails you get
The project's admins get an email:
- Pro CDN and private: when the project gets close to its included downloads, and again for each new block above it. Both emails link to the project's metrics, where you see where the downloads come from. If your organization has a budget notification set, the budget email replaces these two; it goes to the email address in the Subscription Details on the organization's Billing tab.
- Standard CDN on a paid plan: as the project approaches the limit, when it goes over it, and when it is blocked.
- Free plan: as the project approaches the limit, and when its translations are unpublished.
Each project counts on its own
- Every project has its own plan, so it has its own included downloads. They are not pooled across the projects of your organization, even though all of them land on one invoice.
- Tenant projects billed together with their parent count toward the parent's downloads.
- The count starts again with every billing period, on your monthly subscription date.
Keeping an eye on costs
- The organization's Projects tab shows what the selected project costs in the current period.
- A budget notification on the organization's Billing tab emails you when the period's costs pass an amount you choose, and again every day while they stay above it. It only notifies: nothing is blocked and the bill is not capped at the budget.
- Downloads higher than expected usually come from how an app or a build job fetches translations. The Api Metrics tab on the project's metrics page shows where they come from, see Why is there such a high download amount?
On the legacy usage-based plan
The usage-based plan meters every download type without a cap, so nothing is blocked there. Moving a project to a fixed plan: What happens when I switch from the usage-based plan to a fixed plan?