Auto-stop and auto-destroy
Two balance thresholds trigger automatic action on your instances. The first one protects your money. The second one deletes your data.
| Balance | What happens | Your disks |
|---|---|---|
| reaches $0 | Every running instance in the organization is stopped | kept, and still billed |
| reaches −$5 | Every instance that still exists is destroyed | deleted permanently |
Auto-destroy deletes the disk. There is no snapshot, no trash, no grace period and no way to recover the contents. Keep the balance above zero, and top up immediately if it goes negative.
How a balance goes negative at all
Charges are settled after the usage happens, about once a minute. A running instance can therefore consume up to roughly one more minute of GPU time after the balance crosses zero, before the settlement pass sees it and stops it.
From then on the descent is driven by storage. Stopped instances keep billing for their disks whether or not there are credits to pay for it, so a zero balance does not freeze the meter — it keeps falling toward −$5.
At $0: auto-stop
When the settlement pass finds an organization at zero or below:
- Every instance in the
runningstate is stopped. The stop is a normal stop: the container shuts down, the disk is kept, the GPU slot is held for you. - GPU charges end. Storage charges continue, at disk size multiplied by the storage rate per GB-hour.
- Deploying a new instance and starting a stopped one both fail with
INSUFFICIENT_BALANCEuntil you top up. - The action is recorded in the organization's usage log as
instance.auto_stopped.
Instances that were mid-transition — creating, starting — are not touched at that moment; a later pass stops them once they reach running.
Nothing restarts on its own after a top-up. Auto-stopped instances stay stopped until you start them from the console or the API.
At −$5: auto-destroy
When the balance reaches −$5, the settlement pass destroys every instance in the organization that still exists — running, stopped, and error alike. For each one:
- The container and the disk are removed. Everything on that disk is deleted, permanently.
- The GPU slot is released back to the marketplace once teardown finishes, and can be rented by someone else.
- All charges for that instance end.
- The action is recorded in the usage log as
instance.auto_destroyed.
Instances that are mid-transition when the threshold is crossed are picked up by a later pass once they settle into running, stopped or error.
Destroyed instances cannot be restored by topping up afterward. Credits added later apply to new work only.
Topping up stops both actions
Each settlement pass re-reads the balance immediately before it acts on an instance. If your payment lands first, the enforcement step is skipped and nothing is stopped or destroyed. Credits are applied as soon as the payment confirms, so a top-up made while the balance is still above −$5 keeps your disks.
How to never reach the second threshold
Destroy what you are finished with. A stopped instance you have no plans for is a debt clock. Copy anything you need off it, then destroy it. See Stop vs destroy.
Do the storage arithmetic before you walk away. Multiply your disk size by the storage rate to get an hourly figure, then work out how long your balance covers. With storage at $0.0002 per GB-hour:
| Disk | Cost while stopped | Time from $0 to −$5 |
|---|---|---|
| 200 GB | $0.04/hour | about 5 days |
| 500 GB | $0.10/hour | about 2 days |
| 1,000 GB | $0.20/hour | about 1 day |
The window is a day or two, not a month. A long weekend is enough to lose a large disk.
Size disks for the job. A 2,000 GB disk provisioned out of habit costs ten times as much to park as a 200 GB one, and burns through the −$5 window in hours.
Watch the balance chip. The credit balance in the console header refreshes about once a minute and changes color once it drops below $5. Treat that as the signal to top up, not as a warning you can sit on.
Keep a buffer before time off. If nobody will be watching the account, either destroy your instances or leave enough credit to cover their storage for the whole period, with room to spare.