# What you pay for

> Every kind of time and cost, who pays for it, and the usage segment it appears under.

Source: https://nodus-platform-site.pages.dev/docs/guides/billing/what-you-pay-for/
Build revision: 211ad9f836655b1c3a2668c4693e442471f28614

You pay for every second a provider bills for a machine Nodus acquired for your work, from the moment billing starts until the machine is confirmed deleted. Nodus pays for everything it chose or caused. Your usage shows each machine’s time by segment, so you can see where every second went:

* **Boot**: from billing start to your command starting.
* **Restore**: a replacement machine’s time until your command starts again after a recovery, including the checkpoint restore.
* **Running**: from your command starting to its stop.
* **Teardown**: from stop to confirmed deletion, plus the provider’s billing increment, rounded once per machine.

Run `nodus get usage --group-by segment` or open **Usage & billing → Usage** in the console to see the split. For a multi-node run, `--group-by rank,segment` itemizes each member.

## The table

|What|Segment|Who pays|
|-|-|-|
|[]()Time from billing start to your command starting: boot, registration, readiness checks, image pull and checkpoint restore|Boot, Restore|You|
|[]()A boot that fails on the provider’s side, until the machine is confirmed deleted|Boot|You|
|[]()Spare machines Nodus starts to finish your work sooner, machines Nodus releases or replaces on its own decision, machines that fail Nodus’s checks, and failures Nodus causes|None: never on your usage|Nodus|
|[]()From your command starting to its stop, including lazy image fetches, checkpoint writes, the snapshot on stop and work lost after a preemption|Running|You|
|[]()Downloading inputs after your command starts, and the `initCommand` preflight|Running|You|
|[]()Imports, exports and sink loads that run on your org’s capacity|Running|You|
|[]()Disk above 10 GiB per vCPU on Nodus nodes|Running|You|
|[]()A network partition your work tolerates, until it reconnects or until the old machine is fenced and confirmed deleted|Running, Teardown|You|
|[]()The provider’s billing increment, rounded once per machine|Teardown|You|
|[]()Warm idle time beyond an increment you already paid for, minimum workers, and idle Function and agent workers|Warm idle|You|
|[]()The idle share of Nodus-operated capacity, built into its rates and never metered on its own|Included in rates|You|
|[]()From stop to confirmed deletion|Teardown|You|
|[]()Time between stop and the delete request beyond 60 seconds when Nodus caused the delay|None: never on your usage|Nodus|
|[]()Any cost beyond your tightest limit: `maxCostUSD`, a Budget or your balance|None: never on your usage|Nodus|
|[]()A model request whose outcome Nodus cannot confirm, and upstream charges beyond the usage observed on a cut-off stream|None: never on your usage|Nodus|
|[]()Console assistant and command generation calls, within the daily cap|None|Nodus|
|[]()Grading Sandboxes, evaluations, dataset previews, task manifests and model calls made from inside your containers, under your caps|Running|You|
|[]()Mirroring a private image so it can run on hosted containers, and the mirror’s storage|None|Nodus|
|[]()Nodus’s own test runs|None|Nodus|
|[]()Image builds that fail|Build|You|
|[]()Storage above 10 GB per org: Volumes, checkpoints, outputs, images and session state|Storage|You|
|[]()Logs|None|Nodus|
|[]()Egress within 10 GiB per org per day|None|Nodus|
|[]()Egress beyond the included 10 GiB a day, up to your quota, and relayed traffic between multi-node members|Egress|You|
|[]()Your own pool hosts and cloud accounts|None|Free|
|[]()Pool devices running work Nodus schedules, Predict per pool, and capacity Nodus acquires for you|Platform|You|
|[]()Differences between a provider’s invoice and what Nodus metered|None|Nodus|

This table is checked against the billing reference model on every change, so the rows here are the rows Nodus charges by.

## Limits stop work before it overruns

Every paid action holds funds before it starts, and work stops gracefully when a hold cannot be renewed. If a charge would still go past your tightest limit, Nodus absorbs the difference: your balance never pays more than the limit you set. See [How billing works](https://nodus-platform-site.pages.dev/docs/concepts/billing/) for holds, captures and the low-balance stop.