Billing and usage
HQ cloud is billed by use. There is no plan fee and no seat price. Every account gets $10 of usage each month, and usage past $10 in a month is billed at the rates below. New accounts start with a 30-day trial.
No card is needed to sign in, deploy or use DMs. HQ asks for a card the first time a month’s usage passes $10.
These prices apply to accounts created from 16 October 2026. Companies that signed up earlier keep their current plan and box prices until HQ tells them otherwise. Current rates are also on the pricing page and in the Pricing API.
To run HQ on your own machines with no account and no cloud, see Use HQ free, self-hosted or on-prem.
The usage card
| Usage | Price |
|---|---|
| Sync that moves files (upload, download or delete), per sync | $0.10 |
| Gateway call: an integration or external MCP call made through HQ | $0.05 |
| HQ MCP call | $0.05 |
| Agent run | $0.05 |
| Storage in the HQ cloud vault, including old versions of files | $2.00 per GB a month |
| Secret stored in HQ | $0.50 per secret a month |
| Vault | $5 per vault a month |
Storage and secrets are measured each day and charged for the part of the month you keep them.
The vault fee
Each company vault and each personal vault costs $5 a month. The vault fee is a usage line like the others:
- The $10 of monthly usage covers it, so an account with one vault and little other usage pays nothing.
- It is waived during the 30-day trial.
- It counts toward the $10 point at which HQ asks for a card.
Included usage
Every account gets $10 of usage each month. The Billing page in the HQ console and your invoice show the $10 as a discount on the month’s usage. Unused credit does not carry over to the next month.
The 30-day trial
A new account gets 30 days of cloud usage free from the day it is created. During the trial:
- Trial usage is capped at $500. Past the cap, cloud sync pauses until the trial ends.
- The vault fee is waived.
- HQ still asks for a card once the trial’s usage passes $10. Until a card is on file, cloud sync pauses with a message that says why.
Each owner gets one trial. A second company created by the same owner starts without one.
What is free
| Always free |
|---|
| Deploys, with no limit |
| Direct messages (DMs) |
| Background AI that HQ runs for you |
| HQ core on your computer: your files, knowledge, skills, workers and projects |
Local search and the other local hq CLI commands |
| Running HQ in Claude Code, Codex or Cursor with your own AI subscription |
| Syncs that only upload session logs or only clean up, and syncs that find nothing to move or fail |
Spend limit
Usage stops at a spend limit of $100 a month by default. The account owner can change it on the Billing page in the HQ console, from $0 up to $10,000 a month. A limit of $0 pauses usage once the month’s $10 is used. HQ sends a warning email at 80% of the limit.
When the limit is reached, HQ pauses cloud sync uploads, new secrets and integration calls until the next month or until the owner raises the limit. Deploys and DMs never pause.
Boxes
Hosted agents and Outposts run on their own boxes. Boxes are billed per box, separately from usage, and the $10 of monthly usage does not cover them.
| Size | Instance type | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Small | t3.small | $100 a month |
| Medium | t3.medium | $200 a month |
| Large | t3.large | $400 a month |
| XLarge | t3.xlarge | $800 a month |
These prices apply to new boxes on accounts created from 16 October 2026. Boxes that existing customers already run keep their current price. See Agent sizes and billing.
A hosted agent needs a card on file before it is created. Self-run (external) agents have no fee.
When usage starts
Usage starts when you sign in to HQ and use a cloud service, such as sync,
storage or secrets. HQ core and the local hq CLI commands never count as
usage. To install HQ with no account, see
Use HQ free, self-hosted or on-prem.
Deploys
Deploys are free and are never blocked by usage limits. They need an HQ sign-in so HQ knows whose site it is.
- Sign in with
/hq-loginin Claude Code, orhq loginin a terminal. - Run
/deployin Claude Code or Codex from your HQ folder and say what to publish. If you do not belong to a company, the site deploys under your own name.
These deploy extras are not free:
- A custom hostname for one app costs $20 a month per hostname.
- A custom base domain, which serves every app in the company under your own domain, costs $500 a month per company.
- Remote databases (
hq db provision). - Secrets that a deployed app reads from HQ. These count as secrets stored in HQ.
Custom domains are usage add-ons on every account. They need a card on file and a company admin or owner to add them.
Controlling sync
Sync is the usage that grows fastest for most people. Each sync that moves files costs $0.10. To sync less:
- Desktop app. Open Settings, then Sync. “Sync on launch”, “Auto-sync” and “Instant sync” control when HQ syncs on its own. “Also sync my personal HQ files to the cloud” uploads everything in your HQ folder outside cloud companies, including companies you keep local.
- HQ background service. If you installed it with
hq daemon install, pause its sync withhq daemon sync pause, or turn it off for this computer withhq daemon disable sync. - Sync commands.
hq sync push,hq sync pull,hq sync now,hq team-syncand the/hq-syncskill all sync when you run them. - Skills that sync. While you are signed in, a few HQ skills push files to
your personal vault.
/handoffdoes this to save session state.
To stop all cloud activity, sign out:
hq logoutCheck your usage
The Billing page in the HQ console shows this month’s usage by line, how much of your $10 is left, and your spend limit. If it shows usage you did not expect, check Controlling sync for anything that is still syncing.
Larger teams
For contract pricing, invoicing or a private deployment, request an enterprise demo from the pricing page.