SU & Billing

UpServe uses a single unit — SU — for everything you pay for. AI model responses, browser and computer automation, image generation, and other actions all draw from your SU balance. You can see at a glance whether you’re running low from indicators around the app (header, dashboard, and more) — the exact number and full history live under Settings → SU.

This page covers (1) what a SU is, (2) what spends it, and (3) where to check your balance or manage your subscription.

What is a SU?

A SU is UpServe’s single usage unit. Instead of thinking about tokens, calls, or bytes, you only need to think about SU.

• All usage — model responses, tool runs — is computed internally and converted to SU before being deducted.
• SU are spent in three priority groups: (1) welcome boost (onboarding rewards), (2) subscription and weekly SU, (3) admin-granted SU. Within each group, SU closest to expiration are used first; SU with no expiration date are always last.
• When your balance reaches zero, your agents can’t start new work. Upgrade your subscription to keep going.
• The exact balance shown under Settings → SU is always formatted to one decimal place (e.g. 1,234.5). Very small deductions — like an internal helper-model call — show as < 0.1, so a real deduction never silently rounds down to “0.0”. The header badge and dashboard card also show this exact number at all times — only the badge color changes as your balance runs low (see “Checking your balance” below for the color thresholds).

What spends SU?

Two kinds of activity consume SU.

1. AI model responses

Every time an agent answers you or decides its next step, it calls a model. This is the most common source of spending.

• The same question can cost very different amounts depending on whether the agent uses a cheap or a premium model.
• Longer conversations carry more context with each reply, so each response costs a bit more as a thread grows.
• The interview conversation you go through when installing a preset with customization also draws SU like any other conversation (if you belong to a contracted organization, it’s billed to the organization instead of your personal balance).

2. Tool execution infrastructure

When an agent doesn’t just “talk” but actually acts, it runs tools. Some tools use external resources, which are billed separately on top of the model call.

• Computer use / browser automation: runs inside a dedicated virtual machine. You’re billed for the time it stays active.
• Image generation: charged based on resolution and the number of images produced or edited.
• Web search: a small charge applies for each call to the external search provider.

In your transaction history, model responses and image generation appear as “Usage,” while spend that uses external infrastructure — computer use, browser, web search — appears as “Infra,” so you can tell them apart.

What’s the automatic work budget?

Separate from your SU balance, each agent has a daily automatic work budget that covers work it does on its own, without you asking directly — running a schedule, checking in periodically, handling an automatic notification from an outside service, or replying automatically to an AI employee’s mention.

• This is different from SU. SU are your overall usage limit — hit zero, and the agent stops completely. The automatic work budget only paces the work an agent does on its own.
• Once an agent uses up today’s automatic work budget, its scheduled runs and background check-ins pause for the rest of the day. They pick back up automatically within 24 hours — no action needed from you.
• Messages you send directly are never affected. While automatic work is resting, you can still chat with the agent anytime and it responds normally.
• While automatic work is resting, you’ll get a notification, and you’ll see a “Background work resting” badge at the top of the agent screen and in the workspace list on the side.
• The budget is tracked separately for each agent. If you run several agents, one resting doesn’t affect the others.
• By default this is 500 SU per account. You can lower it yourself under Settings → SU → Overview, and you can also set a different value for a single agent from that agent’s own settings page. What you can’t do on your own is raise it — or turn it off — past the platform default; if you need more room, reach out to support.

Checking your balance

On the web (upserve.app), the SU icon at the top of the screen and the credit card on your dashboard both show your exact SU number at all times — only the icon’s color changes as your balance runs down (see “Advanced” below for the exact color thresholds).

Once your balance hits zero and your agents can no longer start new work, a dialog appears over the chat screen. On web and iOS, it includes a View Plans button that takes you to the subscription screen, plus a note about switching to a managed service if that’s available to you. The Android app can’t process payments in-app, so on Android the dialog shows the same message without that button — subscribe on the web instead (see “Subscriptions” below). Closing the dialog doesn’t change anything — new work still can’t start while your balance is at zero.

If you use both personal agents and organization agents, hovering over the SU number shows a note that organization agents are excluded from the tally — the number you see reflects only your personal usage.

Your exact balance and full history live under Settings → SU.

1. Click your profile icon at the top right.
2. Go to Settings → SU (or open /settings/credits directly).
3. You’ll see two tabs:
   • Overview — current balance and this month’s usage at a glance.
   • History — every SU event (grants, usage, refunds, expirations).

On mobile (iOS and Android), there is no SU badge in the top header. Checking your balance and topping up both live in one place: Settings → SU. If you belong to more than one organization, there’s no switching involved — each organization’s usage is listed side by side, as its own section, on that same screen.

The history tab shows which agent ran which model and how much it spent, line by line. It’s the fastest way to find an agent that’s burning more than expected.

Subscriptions

We’re still getting the payment channel ready. You can browse plans under Settings → Subscription, but where the checkout button would be, you’ll see a payment waitlist form instead of an actual charge. Leave your name, email, and phone number and agree to have that information collected, and we’ll email you as soon as checkout opens. If you’ve already signed up, reopening (or refreshing) that screen keeps showing “you’re on the list” — no need to submit again. Joining the waitlist also gets you a 50%-off coupon for your first payment, valid for 30 days once checkout opens.

The rest of this section describes how paying and subscribing will work once checkout is open.

Where you can pay — There are two checkout paths: the web (upserve.app) and the iOS app (Apple in-app purchase). The Android app has no checkout entry point, so Android users subscribe on the web — the result is reflected in the app right away. Whether cancellation is needed at all — and if so, how — differs per path, so manage your subscription through whichever channel you originally used.

Paying on the web — Web checkout runs through a domestic payment processor (Toss Payments) and currently supports Korean won (KRW) by card only. The price shown on screen is the exact amount you’ll be charged. International payment (any currency other than KRW) is not supported yet — if you’re outside Korea, join the waitlist above and we’ll let you know when it becomes available.

SU top-ups were discontinued in August 2026. There is no longer a product for buying SU on their own — SU are granted through a plan subscription only. If you need more, move up to a higher plan. SU you already purchased remain usable until their original expiry (one year from the purchase date).

Free plan weekly SU — Free plan users receive 100 SU automatically each week. Unused SU expire 7 days after they were granted.

Welcome boost — As you go through onboarding, you earn up to 500 SU in stages: 100 on signup → 150 for creating your first agent → 150 when your first task runs → 100 for completing onboarding. Each grant is valid for 14 days and each stage is offered once per account.

Subscription — receive a fixed amount of SU each billing cycle.

• Compare and switch plans under Settings → Subscription (/settings/subscription).
• SU included per plan: Starter — 1,200 SU/month, Pro — 3,000 SU/month.
• Your full period’s SU are granted at once at the time you pay, and stay valid until that billing period ends.
• A web subscription renews automatically every month. You register a card once when you first subscribe, and auto-renewal is already on from that moment — from the next month it’s charged to that same card without you having to press a checkout button each time. Your card details are held by the payment processor — UpServe never stores them.

Changing or cancelling your plan — On the web, tapping a plan card on the subscription screen leads to two very different outcomes depending on direction.

• Moving up to a higher plan (upgrading) takes effect immediately. A confirmation screen first shows this cycle’s remaining credit and the exact amount you’ll be charged today; tap Pay and upgrade and your card is charged on the spot, switching you to the higher plan right away. You’re only charged the difference — this cycle’s unused portion of what you already paid is subtracted first, and that credit is based on the amount you actually paid, not the list price, so a discount coupon never leaves you overcharged against list price. Once the upgrade goes through, your next billing date also restarts from today.
• Moving down to a lower plan (downgrading), or cancelling altogether, doesn’t charge or change anything right away. You’ll see one more confirmation screen (Schedule change for a downgrade, Cancel Subscription for cancellation), and even after confirming, the switch to the new plan (or to Free) only happens when your current billing period ends. Until then you keep your current plan’s features and SU.
• A scheduled change can be undone any time before it takes effect. If you scheduled a downgrade, a banner appears at the top of the subscription screen with an Undo change link; if you scheduled a cancellation, use Resume instead — either way you simply continue on your current plan.
• These confirmation screens are web-only (upserve.app). The iOS and Android apps don’t have them at all — to change or cancel a subscription you paid for on mobile, use the App Store’s or Play Store’s own subscription management screen instead (see below).
• A plan provided under a contract, or set manually by our team, can’t be changed or cancelled from this screen on your own. Trying to change or cancel it shows a message pointing you to your account contact instead — this applies to contracted (e.g. enterprise) organizations and to plans an admin assigned by hand.
• If you subscribed through the iOS app (Apple), change or cancel it from Apple’s subscription settings. A web subscription is managed from the subscription screen on the web.
• If you paid on the web, the two mobile apps handle it differently: the iOS app shows a notice that your subscription is managed on the web, pointing you to the web subscription screen instead. The Android app skips that notice and gives you cancel and resume buttons right on the same screen — no need to open the web.

For per-plan SU amounts and feature comparisons, the Subscription page is always the most accurate source.

If you are on a managed (flat-rate) contract

Organizations on a separately negotiated monthly flat rate do not run on SU. Instead of a balance that shrinks with usage, the unit of management is the list of duties agreed in the contract.

• You will not see the SU balance or the credit card on your dashboard. There is no balance to show. Agents that belong to this organization keep running even if your personal SU balance is zero — the flat-rate contract absorbs the cost instead.
• Instead, the Settings → SU menu item is relabeled “Organization usage”, showing how much the organization’s agents ran this month and how the trend is moving. Any member of the organization can see this screen (on mobile, the same Settings entry is relabeled the same way and leads to the same screen).
• Neither the dashboard’s “SU Usage Trend” chart nor the “Organization usage” screen shows absolute SU numbers or dollar costs. Instead you see a change badge showing whether recent usage is trending up or down, and a share breakdown showing how usage splits across agents. This protects the actual operating cost behind the flat rate from being exposed to members. Regular (metered) organizations that pay per use still see the same screens with exact SU numbers, as before.
• The list of contracted duties and detailed billing lives separately under Settings → Contracted work (/settings/duties). That screen lists the contracted duties and how many times each one was carried out this month and last month, alongside what was billed for that month.
• In the month you paid a one-time setup fee, that amount is included in the billed total, with an “includes one-time setup fee of ○○” note right below it. From the next month on, only the monthly subscription is shown.
• A duty whose run count reads “not linked yet” has no runs attributed to it yet. That is not the same as “0 runs” — zero means the work genuinely never ran, while “not linked yet” means the runs are not being counted against that duty.
• The Contracted work screen is visible only to the organization owner — the party to the contract. Invited members do not see it (the “Organization usage” screen described above is different — it’s visible to any member).
• To add or change duties, talk to your account contact. You cannot add them from the screen. If requests outside the contracted scope keep coming up, your AI manager may notice first and ask whether you would like that work added as a standing duty — pricing is still handled separately by a person.
• Work the agent does entirely on its own (schedules, background check-ins) can also be capped by an organization-wide daily budget. Any member can view this under Settings → Enterprise, but changing it requires your account manager.

SU notifications

UpServe sends the following notifications related to SU. You can toggle them under Settings → Notifications (/settings/notifications).

The monthly budget is something you set on Settings → SU → Overview. The default is 500 SU. It’s a soft line — when you cross it, you get one notification. It does not stop your agents from running.

If a bug report you filed leads to compensation, you’ll get a notification when the case moves to a new stage and another when a fee is actually waived. Both are contract- and billing-related notices, so they can’t be turned off in your notification settings. A waived fee shows up in your transaction history as “Fee waiver” — it’s not a SU grant, it’s an adjustment applied to your next bill.

Advanced

You don’t need anything below for normal use. Read on only if you want to fine-tune cost or understand expiration in detail.

Rough cost differences between tiers

The same job costs different amounts depending on the tier. Exact pricing changes with each model provider, so the table below is meant only as a relative guide for decision making.

Which AI model backs each tier is decided by UpServe, and we swap in better models as they ship. That is also why your usage screens and transaction history show a tier rather than a model name.

Useful rules of thumb:

• For the same work, Ultra typically spends around 10× more SU than Standard. The exact multiple depends on which models are assigned to each tier at the time.
• Long-running conversations grow the input size each turn, which scales the per-reply cost accordingly.

If you’re cost-sensitive — for example, an agent on a daily schedule or bulk summarization — leave it on Standard. Move an agent to Ultra only when hard judgment is making its results unreliable.

Expiration policy

SU expire differently depending on where they came from.

• Free plan weekly SU: expire 7 days after they were granted. When the next weekly grant arrives, anything left from the previous week is auto-expired.
• Subscription SU: when a new billing cycle starts, leftover SU from the previous cycle expire. In other words, subscription SU do not roll over.
• Previously purchased top-up SU: valid for one year from the purchase date. (Top-ups were discontinued in August 2026; this applies only to balances bought before then.)

Expired SU show up in your history as “Expired.” SU that have already been used are not affected.

When SU are spent, this is the order:

1. Welcome boost group first — the one-time grants you earn at each onboarding milestone. These have the shortest validity of any SU type, so they’re always spent first.
2. Subscription and weekly group next — this includes monthly SU from your subscription plan and weekly SU on the Free plan. Within this group, SU closest to expiration are used first.
3. Admin-granted and past top-up group last — SU granted by an admin, plus any bought before top-ups were discontinued. Within this group, earliest expiration first; SU with no expiration date are used last.

Because of this, once any boost SU are gone, subscribers will burn through the current month’s subscription SU before this group starts to drop.

Where to check your balance

On the web, your remaining SU are shown as a number in the SU icon at the top of the screen and on the dashboard card, and update in real time as SU are deducted (mobile apps don’t have this always-on icon — check Settings → SU instead, as described in “Checking your balance” above).

The SU icon changes color as your balance runs down, using the thresholds below. The dashboard card uses its own, more relaxed thresholds (500 / 100 SU) for a 3-step color change, with no pulsing effect.

Tap the icon to open Settings → SU for your balance and usage history.

Auto-renewal and auto top-up

• Web subscriptions renew automatically every month, charged to the card you first registered: the payment processor is Toss Payments, and registering your card also registers the recurring-billing token used for later automatic charges. The same card is charged on the same day each month; in months without that date (say you started on the 31st and it’s February), the charge lands on the last day of the month and returns to the original date the month after. Your card number itself is held by Toss Payments, not by UpServe’s servers.
• You manage the card yourself: Settings → Subscription shows the registered card, and you can replace or remove it there. The last card on an active subscription cannot be removed — register another card first, or cancel the subscription.
• If a payment fails: we retry over the following days and tell you each time. Your service continues during the retry window, so fixing the card before it closes keeps everything uninterrupted. If it still doesn’t go through, the plan returns to Free.
• iOS app (Apple) subscriptions do auto-renew: per store policy, they renew and charge automatically every month. The new grant lands at the same moment that last cycle’s subscription SU expire immediately.
• Auto top-up (Starter/Pro): paid plans have no auto top-up. SU top-ups were discontinued as a product in August 2026, so if you run low, move up to a higher plan.
• Auto top-up (Enterprise): enterprise contracts used to get an exception where packs were charged and added automatically once the balance ran out. That no longer exists. Regardless of plan, new work stops when the balance reaches zero. Agents belonging to a managed (flat-fee) organization are unaffected — they don’t draw on personal SU in the first place.
• If you cancel a web subscription: billing stops from the next month, and your account returns to Free once the period you already paid for ends. You keep full access to your plan’s features and remaining SU until then.
• If you upgrade: it takes effect immediately, and you’re charged the difference on the spot. Your next billing date also restarts from today — rather than charging just the difference and leaving your old billing date in place, an upgrade starts a fresh billing month right now.
• If you downgrade: nothing is charged or changed right away. The new plan takes effect from your next billing date, and the plan you already paid for this cycle stays in effect until the period ends.
• If an iOS app payment fails: the App Store retries automatically on its own schedule. If all retries fail, you’ll see a prompt to update your payment method. Without an update, the plan drops to Free at the end of the current period. iOS subscriptions are also cancelled from Apple’s subscription settings.

How is the upgrade charge calculated?

When you request an upgrade, the amount shown on screen is worked out like this:

Charge = new plan's list price − credit
Credit = "what you haven't used yet" on your current plan

• “What you haven’t used yet” is whichever is larger: your remaining-time share or your remaining-SU share. If you’re early in the billing cycle, the time share wins; if you’ve barely touched your SU, the SU share wins — whichever works out better for you.
• The credit is based on what you actually paid, not the list price. If you’re on a discounted price from a coupon, the credit is calculated from that lower amount — using the list price instead would hand back more than you actually paid.
• Once the upgrade is confirmed, any SU left on your old plan is dropped, and the new plan’s full monthly SU is granted fresh. Your leftover SU was already folded into the credit above, so carrying it forward too would effectively grant the same SU twice.
• An upgrade quote can’t be produced if the currency you’d be charged in differs from the currency you originally subscribed in (currently Korean won only). This is very unlikely to come up, but if it does, you’ll see an error instead of a quote.

How the automatic work budget works

• It covers scheduled runs, periodic check-ins (heartbeat), runs triggered by an automatic notification from an outside service, automatic replies to an AI employee’s mention, sub-tasks it delegates to another agent, reviewing its own recent activity to propose what to do next, and dreaming (reviewing recent conversations and planning ahead). Anything that starts from a message you send directly is fully excluded from this limit.
• If the SU spent on this kind of work over the last 24 hours cross the daily limit, new automatic runs are held back from that point on. Anything already in progress keeps running to completion — it isn’t cut off partway.
• The limit is calculated on a rolling 24-hour window, not a fixed midnight reset. As older usage ages past 24 hours, room opens back up and automatic work resumes on its own.
• The budget is tracked per agent, not combined across your whole account.
• The “budget exceeded” notification is sent at most once per agent within the same 24-hour window.
• If the budget check itself fails for some reason, the system defaults to letting automatic work continue rather than blocking it.
• The size of the daily budget may be adjusted over time as the service is tuned; the mechanics (rolling 24 hours, direct messages excluded) stay the same regardless.
• Resolution order is agent override → account default → platform default (500 SU). From the account or per-agent settings screen, the server only rejects a request that would store a value looser than the platform default (larger, or 0 = unlimited). Lowering the value, or re-saving a value that’s already above the default, always goes through.
• Agents that belong to an organization can also have an organization-level budget on top of the personal/agent axis. Flat-rate (UNMETERED) organizations check only the organization budget — the billing contact’s personal setting has no authority to block the organization’s work. Regular (metered) organizations check both axes and stop the moment either one is exceeded.