When setting up your Starlight Virtual Machine, you can choose between two billing models – Pay-as-you-Go (PAYG) and Prepaid. Each model offers advantages depending on your usage habits, budget flexibility, and business priorities.
This guide compares both models, outlines their key differences, and provides recommendations to help you choose the option that best suits your needs.
Feature | Pay-as-you-Go (PAYG) | Prepaid |
Billing Method | You are charged based on actual resource usage, calculated based on the number of hours your VM is running during a month. | You pay upfront for a specific amount of resources or a billing cycle (monthly/quarterly/yearly). |
Flexibility | Highly flexible – ideal for variable or unpredictable workloads. | Fixed – best for predictable and stable product usage. |
Payment Timing | Billed and charged after usage (postpaid) on the same invoice date every month (applicable for all PAYG services in your Spaceship account). | Billed and charged before usage (prepaid) using a traditional subscription model. |
Cost Predictability | Costs vary each month depending on current VM usage. | Predictable – you know exactly how much you’ll spend (the price depends on the selected billing cycle). |
Ideal For | Dynamic, short-term, or development projects. | Long-term, production, or budget-controlled projects. |
PAYG: You pay only when a Virtual Machine is active. If it's not used but active, the payments are still calculated for this period. Payments are processed after usage. This eliminates the need to maintain expensive, idle infrastructure like traditional on-premise servers or prepaid contracts.
Prepaid: Offers stable, predictable costs since payments are made in advance for clearly defined resources and time periods (billing cycles). Once a billing cycle of the selected Prepaid plan ends, the VM is suspended until you renew it.
PAYG prioritises flexibility – you can deploy, terminate, or order additional resources, such as Starlight Volumes, as needed without prepayment constraints. It’s ideal if your usage varies or you want to avoid upfront costs.
Prepaid focuses on cost control – you know your spending upfront, making it easier to manage fixed budgets and long-term planning. It’s perfect for businesses that value predictability and consistent billing cycles.
Your workloads are dynamic, variable, or temporary.
You want maximum flexibility and prefer to pay only for what you use.
You are testing environments, running pilots, or conducting development work.
You need to scale resources up or down based on current demand.
Your workloads are consistent and predictable.
You need budget stability and want to plan expenses in advance.
You operate production systems that run continuously or with little variation.
You want to avoid fluctuating monthly bills and maintain tighter financial control.