Billing and AI capacity

Billing lives in Settings → Billing, and only the newsroom owner can open it. Admins and members do not see the section in the settings nav at all, and there is no read-only view of it for them.

Three numbers decide what you pay and what you can do: the monthly plan price, the number of seats on a team plan, and the monthly AI capacity the plan includes. Capacity is the only usage meter that can stop work mid-month.

What the Billing section shows

Under the kicker "Billing" and a "Refresh" button sit three panels, always in this order.

If the panels cannot load, the section shows "Billing data is currently unavailable." and nothing else. Press "Refresh".

The current plan card

A status chip sits next to the kicker and reads "Free", "Active", "Past due", or "Canceled". A Free workspace always shows "Free" and never "Active" — the two are not interchangeable.

Two controls: "Billing portal" (which briefly reads "Opening…") and a "Usage details" link that opens Settings → Usage.

Below the plan name you get "Period ends" with the date and the number of "days remaining", then a one-line capacity readout that differs by plan family:

• Free, Plus and Pro show a percentage only on the current plan card — "You've used …% of your monthly AI window" — followed by "Refreshed:" and a timestamp, and the "Monthly AI capacity" tile is not rendered for them. Euro amounts still appear lower down on the same screen: the plan comparison bullets quote each plan's capacity (Monthly AI capacity: €5 / €20 / €120) and price, and invoice amounts are in euros.
• Business and Enterprise show euros: "AI period:" €X "used" · "Remaining capacity:" €Y · "Refreshed:" timestamp.

The metric tiles under that are "Seats" (team plans only), "Monitoring rules", and "Monthly AI capacity". The card closes with the capacity guarantee:

Your monthly AI capacity is guaranteed for the current billing period. If model costs change, plan capacity is recalibrated only at the next period with at least 30 days' notice.

Plans and prices

Prices and capacity are in euros. Both come from the same catalog that feeds the public pricing page, so the numbers on the marketing site and the numbers in your workspace cannot disagree.

The plan comparison grid groups these under "Individual", "Business" and "Enterprise" headings and lists five bullets per plan: "Monthly AI capacity:", "Monitoring rules:", "Source cap:", "Team management:" and "WordPress delivery:". Every other limit — daily story deliveries, custom tags, custom categories — is real but is not shown on this screen. See Plan and quota reference for the complete set.

Enterprise is not self-serve. Its card shows a "Contact" button instead of a checkout button, and an Enterprise workspace has no AI capacity until ErmisAI sets it on your account. Until that happens, every AI action in the story workspace fails with "AI capacity has not been configured for this workspace yet. Contact support to activate your contracted monthly envelope."

What actually consumes AI capacity

Only three actions, all of them in the story workspace, and all of them things a person clicked:

• composing or regenerating the article,
• a message in the refinement or compose chat,
• a Quick completion.

Everything the feed does on its own — fetching sources, grouping articles into stories, writing the synthesis behind a card — is run and paid for by ErmisAI. It never touches your capacity, no matter how many sources you monitor. See Composing and refining a story.

Capacity is measured over a rolling one-month window anchored to the billing anniversary — the day of the month shown under "Period ends". On Free, the date on the current plan card can lag in the past while the window still rolls over each month; the "Period ends" line in Settings → Usage is the one that reflects the window capacity is actually measured against. Spend starts again from zero in the next window.

50%, 80% and 100%

Crossing each threshold puts a notification in the newsroom inbox at Settings → Notifications, titled:

• "50% of monthly AI capacity used"
• "80% of monthly AI capacity used"
• "Monthly AI capacity reached"

Each one fires at most once per billing period. These notifications are written in English regardless of your interface language.

At 80% and 100%, newsrooms on Free or Plus also get an upgrade email, sent to the person who owns the workspace. It is not sent if the subscription is past due or canceled.

Reaching 100%

Overage billing is off by default on every plan, which means the included capacity is also a hard stop. Nothing is billed beyond it; requests are refused instead.

The current plan card raises "Monthly AI capacity exhausted" with the line "Additional tenant-billable requests will be blocked until the next billing period or a billing override is applied.", and Settings → Usage shows "Monthly AI capacity has been exhausted and overage billing is disabled."

In the story workspace, compose, chat and Quick completion then fail with a toast reading "AI usage is above the included allowance and overage is disabled." That message is English-only in every interface language.

Two other banners exist for accounts ErmisAI has configured differently. If an explicit monthly hard limit is set and you reach it, the card shows "AI hard limit reached" with "Tenant-billable AI usage has reached the configured monthly hard limit." If overage is enabled and you go past the included capacity, it shows "AI overage active" with "Current overage:" and the amount accrued so far.

Seats on team plans

Both Business plans include five seats. Extra seats are €15 each on Business Plus and €39 on Business Pro, and each extra seat also adds capacity — €7 and €35 respectively.

The seat control is not on the current plan card. It sits inside each Business plan card in the "Plan comparison" grid: a spinner labelled "Seats" with the line "5 included · €15/extra". It cannot go below the included five. Changing it rewrites the button to read, for example, "Choose Business Pro (7 seats)" and starts a new checkout at that seat count.

Seats are enforced when you invite someone. Once memberships plus pending invitations reach the seat count, the next invite is refused — on Business Pro, with "Seat limit reached for the Business Pro plan. Remove an active or invited member before sending another invitation."

Team features also require a team newsroom, not a solo desk. If you set up as a desk of one, adding people is not a billing change — see Team, roles and permissions.

Changing plan

The new plan is not live the instant you return. ErmisAI applies it when the payment provider confirms the subscription, which is why the banner says the state is still refreshing. Press "Refresh" if the card still shows the old plan.

One thing worth knowing before you upgrade mid-period: capacity is not pro-rated — you get the new plan's full monthly capacity for the current window, and the used figure shown after an upgrade reflects spend inside the current billing window.

Choosing the plan you are already on at the same seat count is rejected with "Plan is already active". Re-choosing a plan after a cancellation is allowed, and is the normal way back.

Cancelling, payment details and receipts

Press "Billing portal". That opens the provider-hosted portal, which is where you cancel, change the card on file, and get invoice documents. ErmisAI has no cancel button and no downgrade button of its own.

Invoice history

The panel is headed "Invoice history" / "Latest invoices for your tenant subscription." with four columns — "Invoice", "Issued", "Amount", "Status" — and the empty state "No invoices available yet." Statuses are "Paid", "Open" and "Failed". Only the 120 most recent invoices are listed.

There is no download link or action column in ErmisAI. Invoice documents live in the billing portal.

When a payment lapses

This is the most consequential thing billing does, so it is worth reading before it happens. A subscription that goes past due or canceled does not merely lose its extras — the entire workspace falls back to Free-plan limits until it is settled.

The current plan card says so directly, under "AI access is paused":

This subscription is not in good standing, so tenant-billable AI requests are blocked and the workspace runs on Free-plan limits. Settle the open invoice in the billing portal to restore access immediately.

AI actions fail with "AI usage is blocked because the subscription billing state is not active." Settling the invoice in the portal restores everything; you do not need to do anything else in ErmisAI.

One wrinkle: while a payment is outstanding, the Team and Integrations sections can still appear in the settings nav even though the actions inside them will be refused. The nav is not a reliable signal of what will work in this state.

The Usage section

Settings → Usage is open to the owner and admins, unlike Billing. It is headed "Usage" / "Monthly AI capacity, delivery mix, and volume trend."

The panel "AI usage this billing period" carries "Last refresh" and "Period ends", then metrics that again split by plan family:

• Free, Plus and Pro: "Monthly AI window used" (a percentage), "Blocked requests", "AI requests".
• Business and Enterprise: "Billable usage", "Remaining capacity", "Blocked requests", "Guardrails", then "Monthly capacity", "Current overage", "Failed requests", "AI requests". The "Guardrails" tile shows the platform's raw enforcement mode; it is diagnostic, not something you set.

Business plans get one extra line that converts the remaining euros into a count of "standard stories" and "deep investigations" remaining this period. It is an average, not a promise — a long story with a lot of chat costs more than a short one composed in a single pass.

"Top AI surfaces" lists where the spend went, using the internal names of the three chargeable actions:

Its empty state is "No tenant-billable AI usage has been recorded yet."

"Member breakdown" — who spent what — appears only in team newsrooms, and only for the owner. Admins see the rest of the page without it.

Two more panels close the page: "Delivery method breakdown", counting delivered stories by route, and "Usage over time", a daily volume chart.

What billing does not include

• No trial, of any kind. There is no trial state, no countdown and no trial expiry. Free is the entry point and needs no payment details.
• No self-serve overage. Covered above; it is the single most common wrong assumption about this screen.
• No invoice documents in ErmisAI. The portal has them.
• No cancel or downgrade button in ErmisAI. The portal has those too.
• No euro spend figures on Free, Plus or Pro. The current plan card and the Usage panel show a percentage of the window instead of amounts spent and remaining. Plan prices and plan capacity are still quoted in euros in the comparison grid.
• No pro-rated capacity when you change plan mid-period.