Billing & credits

IPX runs on prepaid credits, metered by the second from tunnel-connect to teardown. You can never be charged past your balance, and there is never a surprise invoice.

You top up a credit balance with a card, we draw it down second by second while a box is connected, and you watch it tick from the console or the API. Set a hard spend cap per box and we reclaim the machine the instant it is hit. Run the balance to zero and the box is reclaimed cleanly. That is the entire model.

How billing works

Topping up credits

Add credits before you rent, or any time your balance is running low. The console handles card entry and confirmation through Stripe.

1. Open the billing console

   Go to Billing in the console. You will see your current balance and a top-up form.

2. Choose an amount and pay

   Enter how much you want to add and confirm with your card. Payment is handled by Stripe. As soon as the charge succeeds, the credits land on your balance.

3. Rent and connect

   With credits in hand, rent a box and connect. The meter only starts once your tunnel is up. See Renting and Connecting.

Topping up from the API

You can also create a Stripe payment intent programmatically. POST /api/v1/credits takes an amount_cents value (an integer number of US cents) and returns a client_secret you confirm with Stripe.js on your side. The credits are added when the payment confirms.

# create a $5.00 top-up intent
$ curl -X POST https://gpu.ipxtechholding.com/api/v1/credits \\
    -H "Authorization: Bearer $IPX_TOKEN" \\
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \\
    -d '{"amount_cents": 500}'

{
  "payment_intent_id": "pi_3Q...",
  "client_secret": "pi_3Q..._secret_..."
}

Per-second metering

Billing is tied to the rental lifecycle, not to the clock on the wall. A box moves through provisioning_requested to active_connected to terminated. The meter is bound to the connected window:

• Provisioning is free. Nothing is charged while a box is being acquired and booted.
• The meter starts at tunnel-connect. Once the box dials home, opens its reverse tunnel, and reaches active_connected (a connection_string appears), the per-second meter begins.
• The meter stops at teardown. When you terminate the rental, or the box is reclaimed, billing stops at that second. There is no rounding up to the hour.
• One-minute minimum. Each rental is billed for at least 60 seconds of connected time. After the first minute, billing is exactly per second.

Checking your balance

Your live balance is on the billing console and available from the API. GET /api/v1/credits returns your current balance in micro-USD.

$ curl https://gpu.ipxtechholding.com/api/v1/credits \\
    -H "Authorization: Bearer $IPX_TOKEN"

{
  "balance_micro_usd": 4811000
}

Here 4811000 micro-USD is a balance of $4.811. Poll this endpoint while a box is connected to watch it draw down, or check it before a long run to make sure you have headroom.

Hard spend caps

Every rental can carry a hard spend cap, max_cost_micro_usd, set when you rent the box. It is the most that single box is ever allowed to spend. The moment metered cost reaches the cap, IPX tears the box down and stops the meter. There is no overshoot.

# never let this box spend more than $5.00
$ curl -X POST https://gpu.ipxtechholding.com/api/v1/rentals \\
    -H "Authorization: Bearer $IPX_TOKEN" \\
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \\
    -d '{"listing_id": 4021, "max_cost_micro_usd": 5000000}'

What happens when a cap is hit:

• The box transitions to terminated and its tunnel closes. Any further work on it stops.
• Billing ends at the capped amount. You are charged for what was used up to the cap, never beyond it.
• The freed credits stay on your balance for the next rental.

Hitting zero balance

The spend cap protects a single box. Your credit balance protects your whole account. You cannot start a box without credits, and a connected box draws the balance down second by second.

When the balance reaches zero, IPX reclaims the running box the same way a spend cap does: the tunnel closes, the rental moves to terminated, and the meter stops. Because billing can never exceed the credits you have already paid for, this is the floor.

The micro-USD convention

To keep money exact and integer-only, IPX represents every amount in micro-USD. One US dollar is one million micro-USD. This avoids floating-point rounding on fractions of a cent, which matters when you bill per second.

To convert, divide micro-USD by 1,000,000 for dollars. Listing prices are exposed as both raw micro-USD (price_micro_usd) and a human-readable decimal (price_usd), so you can display whichever you need. Balances and caps are micro-USD; the top-up API takes plain amount_cents for Stripe convenience and converts for you (1 cent = 10000 micro-USD).

Next steps