> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.phoneuse.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# Billing modes
> The two ways a device is billed, the current rates, and how to choose between them.
Each device is billed one of two ways. The choice is per device, not per org, so
a fleet can mix both. A single device, though, runs exactly one mode: monthly or
metered, never both, and a monthly device is never metered.
Rates on this page reflect the pricing decision of 2026-08-29. The canonical,
always-current price list is
[phonebase.co](https://phonebase.co/#pricing); if the two ever disagree, the
site wins.
## Rates
Prices are per device, by the tier the device is on. You do not name a tier
when you call a tool, and no tool takes a tier or a plan argument. A device's
tier is fixed when the device is provisioned, by the subscription that
provisioned it, and it travels with the device from then on.
| Tier | `backendKind` | `fidelityTier` | Monthly | Per minute |
| - | - | - | - | - |
| Robot arm on a real iPhone | `robot_hand` | `physical` | \$199 | \$0.15 |
| Real Android hardware | `adb_real` | `software` | \$99 | \$0.05 |
| Cloud phone | `adb_cloud` | `software` | \$49 | \$0.02 |
| Emulator | `emulator` | `software` | \$19 | \$0.01 |
Both identifier columns are fields you can read off a device, in the
`list_devices` and `get_device` response. To find out which row of this table a
device bills on, read its `backendKind`.
`fidelityTier` answers a different question: how input reaches the screen.
Three priced tiers share the value `software`, because fidelity describes the
mechanism while price tracks the hardware behind it. Do not read one column off
the other. See [Capabilities](/devices/capabilities) for both fields, including
the backend kinds that have no priced tier yet, and
[Device tiers](/devices/tiers) for what fidelity buys you.
A cloud phone reaches you through the device gateway tunnel, its adapter is
live, and you can **buy one on the spot** from the `/devices/add` screen. See
[Buy, drive and return a device](/guides/first-device).
**The table above is the rate card, not the order form.** What you can
actually buy is whatever `GET /v1/skus` lists, which is one entry per pair of
sku and billing mode that this deployment holds a configured price for. A pair
with no price is **absent** from that list rather than shown without a number.
**No per minute pair is published today**, so a device cannot be bought on the
per minute mode right now, whatever rate this table names for it. Call
`GET /v1/skus` and believe that rather than this page.
**The robot arm per minute rate is not on sale.** It stays on this rate card,
and `GET /v1/skus` never lists a robot arm sku with `payg`, whatever a
deployment configures.
**Robot arm devices are sold monthly only.** `GET /v1/skus` never lists a
sku with `billing: "day"`, whatever a deployment configures.
A day pass bought earlier keeps its terms. Its 24 hours start when the device
is ready. When they are up, the device leaves your fleet, any task still
running on it stops, and you get an `order_ended` notification. Until the
device is ready you can cancel the order for a full refund. If it is not
ready within 30 minutes of payment, the order is cancelled and refunded in
full automatically.
## Monthly
A flat monthly price for the device. There is no meter, no allowance to watch,
and no overage: run the device all month and the invoice reads the same.
Choose this when a device is in steady use, or whenever you want the bill to be
a constant rather than a variable.
## Per minute
No fixed fee. You are billed for [active time](/billing/units) only, in whole
minutes, rounded up, with a one minute minimum per lease. A lease of ninety
seconds bills as two minutes; a lease of ten seconds bills as one.
Choose this for bursty or exploratory work, where a device would sit unused for
long stretches of the month. Remember that active time is lease time: nothing
pauses the clock while a lease is held, so release a device when you are done
with it.
The worst case is bounded, and the bound is the lease, not your attention. A
lease expires **10 minutes** after it is granted and can be renewed, and no
lease may live more than **60 minutes** from when it was taken. A device you
took, by acquiring it or by acting on it, and then walked away from bills at
most that hour and then stops, not
the rest of the afternoon, and if the client holding it has crashed it stops
after 10 minutes because nothing is left to renew it. Expiry is the only thing
that stops the clock: nothing watches for idleness. See [Metering units](/billing/units) for how active time is
integrated, and [Spending controls](/billing/spending-controls) for the limits
you can set yourself.
## Which one to pick
The break-even is arithmetic: divide the monthly price by the per minute rate
and you have the number of metered minutes that costs the same as the month.
Below that, per minute is cheaper. Above it, monthly is, and the gap widens as
usage grows.
If you do not know your usage yet, start on per minute. It is the mode that
punishes a wrong guess least, and you can move a device later.
## Agent steps are a separate axis
Steps consumed by the agent tier are counted independently of the device's
billing mode. A device on either mode can run agent tasks, and those steps are
accounted for on their own axis. See [Metering units](/billing/units).
Steps are included in the device price today, and no separate step rate is
published.
The reasonable use ceiling is not a billing threshold you can cross into an
overage. It is enforced as a per run step budget, and a run that reaches its
budget is refused its next frame rather than billed more. The default budget is
**50 steps per run**, a deployment can set its own, and `maxSteps` on your
request can only lower it. One org may have **4 agent runs** going at once by
default. See [Agent tier](/agent/overview#budgets-live-on-the-control-plane)
for how each ceiling is enforced.
## Accounts start paid
There is no self serve free tier. An org is billed from first use, and there is
no trial that silently converts.
What softens that is the **return**. Giving a device back stops its billing and
returns the part of the month you did not use, so evaluating one costs a
fraction of a month rather than a month. See
[Buy, drive and return a device](/guides/first-device#step-4-return-the-device).
If you would rather buy from a browser than from code, the console does exactly
that, on this same surface and at these same rates. It is not a separate
product, and this page applies to it.
This documentation is built and hosted on [Mintlify](https://mintlify.com), a developer documentation platform.