Understanding Alchemy's Pay-As-You-Go billing model
Last updated: August 27, 2026
Alchemy has transitioned from fixed monthly subscription plans (like the $49 Growth plan) to a Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) billing model. This article explains how the new billing system works and what to expect.
How Pay-As-You-Go billing works
With the Pay-As-You-Go plan, you are charged based on your actual usage of Compute Units (CUs). There are no monthly subscription fees - you only pay for what you use.
Current PAYG pricing:
$0.45 per 1 million CUs (up to 300M CUs)
$0.40 per 1 million CUs (beyond 300M CUs)
You can view detailed pricing information on our pricing page.
Estimating your costs from request volume
Pricing is based on Compute Units, not the number of requests, so a rough CU estimate is more useful than a raw request count when you're trying to budget. As a general benchmark, one API request uses about 25 CUs on average, though the actual cost varies by method. For example, 6,600 requests would use roughly 165,000 CUs (0.165M CUs).
At the PAYG rate of $0.45 per 1 million CUs, that comes out to about $0.07 for 6,600 requests. On the Free tier, this volume falls well within the 30 million CU monthly allowance, so it would cost $0.
For an exact number instead of an estimate, check the Usage tab in your Alchemy Dashboard, which breaks down your CU consumption by method, chain, and product.
Free tier vs Pay-As-You-Go
When you upgrade from the Free tier to Pay-As-You-Go, you lose access to the free monthly Compute Units. The Free tier currently includes 30 million CUs per month, but once you switch to PAYG, you'll be charged for every CU consumed starting from zero.
Managing costs
To help control your spending on the Pay-As-You-Go plan, you can:
Go to Billing Settings in your Alchemy Dashboard and set a Usage Limit in either dollars or Compute Units. Once the limit is reached, your service automatically stops, so you won't be charged beyond that amount.
Set up usage alerts to get notified as your consumption approaches a threshold, without stopping your service.
The Usage Limit panel has separate Compute Units and Dollars tabs. Double check which tab is selected before entering your amount and confirming the update — entering a value in the wrong tab is a common reason the saved limit doesn't match what you intended. After updating a limit, reopen the panel to confirm the new value saved.
This Usage Limit applies across all of your Data Services at once, including eAPIs, Webhooks, and Subgraphs, from the single Billing Settings control.
Note: Solana gRPC usage does not currently count toward usage limits, so a usage limit set in dollars or CUs will not stop Solana gRPC traffic.
Webhooks specifically: if you reach your CU limit without AutoScale enabled, your active webhooks are automatically paused. They do not resume on their own after you add more CUs or upgrade, so you'll need to manually unpause them from the Webhooks section of your dashboard.
Payment methods
Pay-As-You-Go plans require credit card payment with automatic collection enabled. Monthly invoicing is not currently available for PAYG plans.
Transition from legacy plans
If you were previously on a fixed monthly plan (such as the $49 Growth plan or Scale plan), your account was automatically migrated to Pay-As-You-Go. Any remaining credits from annual plans are applied to your invoices when they're generated, though these credits may not be visible in your dashboard during the billing period.
For questions about your specific billing situation or to understand how credits are being applied to your account, please contact our support team.