Cloudways Autonomous offers a simple and flexible hourly pricing model that ensures you pay only for what you use.
Whether you’re activating, upgrading, or deactivating your application, the system automatically adjusts billing based on actual usage time — giving you full control and transparency over your costs.
Table of Contents:
Understanding the Pricing Model
If you’ve signed up for Cloudways Autonomous on or after November 11, 2025, the following pricing model applies. Cloudways Autonomous uses an hourly, per-application billing structure.
You can activate, upgrade, downgrade, or deactivate your plan anytime — no questions asked.
You are only billed for the duration your app remains active. Once you deactivate your app, billing automatically stops.
Example:
If you choose the Growth Plan ($100/month), we convert this to an hourly rate:
$100 ÷ total hours in a month = hourly rate
If your app remains active for just one hour, you’ll be charged only for that single hour.
Payment Methods:
If you have funds in your Cloudways Account, invoices are automatically paid using that balance.
If funds are insufficient, the remaining balance will be charged to your registered credit card.
You can also pay your invoices through PayPal.
Go through the following articles to learn more about:
Hourly Calculation Example:
Here’s how hourly billing works if you change plans during the month:
Plan | Monthly Cost | Hourly Rate | Duration | Cost |
Growth | $100/month | $0.1488/hr | 10 days (240 hrs) | $35.71 |
Scale | $200/month | $0.2976/hr | 10 days (240 hrs) | $71.42 |
Total: $107.13
In this example, you started on the Growth Plan and then upgraded to Scale midway through the month.
You’ll only pay $107.13, based on the exact duration of each plan.
Autoscaling Charges
Autoscaling allows your app to automatically adjust resources based on demand. These charges are calculated hourly per active container, depending on your plan.
Plan | Autoscaling Rate (per container/hour) |
Growth | $0.07 |
Scale | $0.10 |
Plus | $0.12 |
You can also set Autoscaling Budget Thresholds to control your maximum autoscaling cost.
Once your defined budget is reached, autoscaling automatically pauses — preventing any charges beyond your set limit.
Note: Even when autoscaling pauses, bandwidth and disk space can still generate overage charges depending on your usage.
Plan Overages
Every plan includes predefined allowances for disk space and bandwidth. If you exceed these limits, additional (overage) charges apply as shown below:
Overage Type | Rate | Billing Frequency |
Disk Space | $1 per GB/month | Hourly (pro-rata) |
Bandwidth | $0.04 per GB/month | Monthly |
Visits | Free | Free |
Your applications will continue running smoothly — with no downtime or interruptions. Any additional usage is simply added to your next invoice.
Disk Space Example
If your plan includes 20 GB of disk space and you exceed it by 2 GB:
$1 ÷ 30 days × 2 GB = $0.067 per day
So, the extra 2 GB will cost you $0.067/day until usage returns to the limit.
Bandwidth Example
If your plan includes 150 GB of bandwidth and you exceed it by 10 GB:
$0.04 × 10 GB = $0.40
You’ll be charged $0.40 for the additional bandwidth used that month.
Summary
Cloudways Autonomous ensures complete pricing transparency with flexible hourly billing. You’re charged only for what you use — whether it’s plan duration, autoscaling, or overages — giving you peace of mind and cost efficiency every step of the way.
That’s it! We hope this article was helpful.
Need Help?
If you need assistance, feel free to:
Visit the Cloudways Support Center
Chat with us: Need a Hand > Send us a Message
Or create a support ticket anytime.
We're here 24/7 to help you!