---
title: "Pricing"
description: "KUMODeck does not make money on your app or game. There is no free tier: you pay KUMODeck's usage fee for the parts you use, set at cost, and nothing more."
url: "/docs/pricing/"
lang: en
index: "/llms.txt"
---
# Pricing

> **Note** KUMODeck is in early access. This page describes how billing works in the server today; exact unit prices
> are published before general availability.

KUMODeck does not make money on your app or game. There is no free tier: you pay KUMODeck's usage fee for the parts you
use, set at cost, and nothing more. KUMODeck itself pays for none of it.

| | |
|---|---|
| KUMODeck's usage fee for what you use (API requests, hosting storage and reads, saves, multiplayer, card images, Functions) | **At cost**, no markup, **no free tier**, from the first request, taken from your prepaid balance |
| Adding funds | Stripe's actual card fee, taken from the deposit (about 45¢ on $5) |

## What you can count on

- **No caps, nothing to outgrow.** There is no free-tier limit that switches your app off the day it goes viral on X.
  A game with 100,000 plays in a month keeps running and costs a few dollars (see the examples below).
- **Nothing runs on money you did not put in.** Usage comes out of your prepaid balance, so a bill can never run away from
  you. You get a low-balance email first; if the balance still reaches $0, what is billed pauses until you top up and then
  resumes on its own (see [Prepaid balance](#prepaid-balance)). Automatic top-up keeps a busy app from ever pausing.
- **Prices we have no way to raise.** The usage fee is what running the parts you use actually costs KUMODeck, with nothing
  added, so there is no margin to raise. If those costs change, the fee follows them — and nothing else changes.

### While KUMODeck is young

KUMODeck's fixed monthly costs (for example a $5-a-month base plan for running the API) are shared between the creators who
use them. Right after launch, while only a few creators share them, your part of these base fees can look large next to what
you actually used.
In real money it is a few cents to a few dollars a month, and it gets smaller as more creators join.

## Compared with other options

Facts from each service's public pricing pages, checked on 2026-09-27 (sources at the end of this page). Every option here is
a reasonable choice; they do different jobs, so compare what you actually need.

**Backend services**

| | Free tier | Paid from |
|---|---|---|
| **KUMODeck** | none — at cost from the first request, **no caps** | what you use |
| Firebase | Spark: hosting transfer 360 MB a day, Firestore 50,000 reads a day | pay as you go (Blaze) |
| Supabase | Free: 50,000 monthly active users; paused after 1 week without use | $25 a month (Pro) |
| Azure PlayFab | development mode: 1,000 players per title | pay as you go; plans from $99 a month |
| Convex | 1M function calls a month | $25 per developer a month |
| Photon Realtime | 20 concurrent users (development only) | $95 a month for 500 CCU |
| Heroic Cloud (Nakama) | none (self-hosting the open-source server is free) | $600 a month |

## Two typical creators

These are estimates, worked out from the providers' public prices (checked 2026-09-27) and the assumptions listed. Your game
will differ; `GET /v1/money/usage` shows your real numbers.

**1. A free game goes viral on X: 100,000 plays in a month**

Assumptions: every play is a new player signed in as a guest; one play loads 20 files (1 MB in total) and makes 10 API calls
(guest sign-in and saves) at about 2 ms of CPU each; 2 KB of data per player.

| | Per month |
|---|---|
| **KUMODeck** | **about $1.80** at list price (3M requests $0.90, CPU $0.12, file reads $0.72, database $0.07; no charge for transfer). Up to about $5 while KUMODeck is young and few creators share the base fee. Nothing stops |
| Firebase (Hosting, Firestore, anonymous Auth) | about $15 on Blaze (100 GB of hosting transfer). On the free Spark plan, hosting stops at 360 MB a day — about 360 plays |
| Supabase | $25 (Pro), since 100,000 players is past the 50,000 of the free plan; game files hosted separately |

**2. Multiplayer: 200 players online at peak**

Assumptions: 200 players at peak and 50 on average over the month; rooms of 4; each player sends 20 messages a second (an
action game), and every message reaches the other 3 players in the room.

| | Per month |
|---|---|
| **KUMODeck** (current SDK) | **about $71**, plus a share of the base fee |
| Photon Realtime | $95 (500 CCU plan) |
| PartyKit-style Durable Objects on your own Cloudflare account | about $70 |
| Colyseus Cloud | from $15 |
| Heroic Cloud (Nakama) | $600 minimum |

> **Tip** Use the latest SDK. Current SDKs connect each room straight to its server and take the cheap path automatically. An old
> SDK that does not announce this ability sends room traffic through the first connection instead, which costs roughly 10
> times as much per match — in the example above, up to about $1,830 a month instead of $71. Updating the SDK is all it takes.

## Only what you use

Every building block is optional, and only the blocks you use are metered. Host your app elsewhere and there is no hosting
cost; never turn on Functions and they cost nothing. Parts that
cost money per use or change what your users see — sharing tools, sign-in providers, Functions — are off until you turn
them on. `GET /v1/money/usage` (or `usage_get` from your [AI agent](/docs/claude-code/index.md)) breaks the month down by component.

Some examples of the usage fee:

| Component | What you pay |
|---|---|
| Sign in with X | **Free**. X does not charge for reading the signed-in user's profile (`/2/users/me`), so KUMODeck only counts sign-ins and the unit price is $0 (with your own X app or the shared one) |
| [Functions](/docs/guides/functions/index.md) | a usage fee at cost per request, CPU millisecond, database row, GB stored and [log line](/docs/guides/functions/index.md#logs) ($0.60 per million; nothing if your code prints nothing). A small app (1M requests, 100 MB database) is about $0.60 a month |
| Fixed monthly costs (base plans with included usage) | shared between the creators who use them, in proportion to use, and settled against the actual bill at the end of the month — any difference is refunded to your prepaid balance or charged |

## Prepaid balance

Usage is taken from a prepaid balance, like the API credits of an AI provider. Top it up with `kumodeck billing topup` or
from the dashboard (Stripe Checkout, $5–$10,000; you pay on Stripe's page yourself)
. Because there is no free tier, a new account starts with a **first deposit** — the $5
minimum is enough to try everything; the card fee (about 45¢ on $5) is Stripe's actual fee, taken from the deposit.

- **Invite code**: if you were given one, use it with `kumodeck signup --invite <code>` when you sign up, or
  `kumodeck billing redeem <code>` (or the dashboard) afterwards. It adds **$5 of invite credit** (usage fees only; it cannot be
  refunded or withdrawn) once your email address is confirmed. `kumodeck billing` shows how much of your balance is invite
  credit. One code per account.

- **Low-balance notice**: when your balance drops below a line you choose (default $5), you get an email and an MCP notice
  with an estimate of how many days it will last.
- **Automatic top-up** (off by default): save a card at checkout and choose a threshold and an amount ($5–$1,000).
- **When the balance reaches $0** and nothing else covers it (an automatic top-up that has not
  failed), everything that is billed pauses: your projects' API for your users, hosting, multiplayer and Functions. Your users
  see a neutral message — never the KUMODeck name. New projects and new deployments are refused with `402` (the CLI prints
  `kumodeck billing topup`; `kumodeck billing` says whether you are paused). Your dashboard, `kumodeck config push`, reading
  your data and topping up keep working, and everything resumes automatically as soon as the balance is above $0 again
  (or an automatic top-up covers it).
- **If usage goes a little past $0** before the pause takes effect, the difference is owed and is covered first by your
  next top-up.

## Closing your account

You can close your developer account yourself: on the [dashboard](https://dashboard.kumodeck.com) under **Account** (click your email
address at the top), or by typing `kumodeck account close` in your own terminal. Read these three points first — both
places show them again before you confirm:

1. **It cannot be reopened.** There is no way back, not even through support. To use KUMODeck again you create a new
   account (the same email address can be used again only after the old account has been erased).
2. **Your prepaid balance is returned** after the month's usage is finalized (by around the 3rd of the next month): the
   part you added by card is refunded to that card (a partial refund of the original payment). Invite credit is not
   returned. Automatic top-ups stop.
3. **Your account's records stay until everything is settled.** You can still sign in and see them.

Before closing, delete your projects: KUMODeck does not delete running projects for you (the close is refused until none are
left; the dashboard's Account page lists them with a delete button).

| After closing, you can | After closing, you cannot |
|---|---|
| Sign in with the same email and password | Create new projects |
| See your prepaid balance and usage | Keep any session: every dashboard, CLI and AI tool (MCP) session is signed out |
| | Reopen the account |

Once KUMODeck holds no money for you and every refund is done, your email address, password and name are erased.
Accounting records are kept as the law requires.

AI tools cannot close an account: there is no MCP tool for it, the API refuses MCP connections, and `kumodeck account close`
only runs when you type it in an interactive terminal (`--yes`, pipes and CI are refused). Your AI assistant will point you
to the dashboard or the command instead.

## Sources

All checked on 2026-09-27. Prices change; the providers' own pages are authoritative.

- Payments: [Stripe pricing](https://stripe.com/en-us/pricing), 
- Infrastructure: [Cloudflare Durable Objects pricing](https://developers.cloudflare.com/durable-objects/platform/pricing/)
- Backends: [Firebase](https://firebase.google.com/pricing), [Supabase](https://supabase.com/pricing), [Azure PlayFab](https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/games/products/playfab/pricing), [Convex](https://www.convex.dev/pricing), [Photon](https://www.photonengine.com/pricing), [Colyseus](https://colyseus.io/pricing/), [Heroic Labs](https://heroiclabs.com/pricing/), [PartyKit joins Cloudflare](https://blog.partykit.io/posts/partykit-is-joining-cloudflare/)