Since launch, Refine has been free for everyone. That doesn't change today — the free plan stays real, and it stays free. What changes is that we're announcing what comes next: paid plans, designed with the same honesty we try to put into everything else on this site.
Here's the model, and — more importantly — the reasoning behind it.
The four plans
Growth and Scale are launching soon — self-serve checkout isn't live yet. Until it is, nothing changes for existing workspaces, and you can talk to us to lock in launch pricing.
Update, 2026-09-04. The paragraph above was accurate when it was published and is no longer. Managed billing went live on 2026-08-31: all four plans are assignable today and the entitlement gates enforce them, so "launching soon" now describes only self-serve card checkout — and "nothing changes for existing workspaces" is no longer true either. We've left the original text standing rather than editing a dated record. The current position, and what shipped with it, is in Refine Plans Are Live.
Update, 2026-09-06. The Free and Growth bands above have moved. Free was gated on connecting one AWS account and covered spend all the way to $10k/month; it is now gated on spend alone — under $2,000/month — and Growth runs from $2,000 to $10,000. Scale and Enterprise are unchanged, as is everything Free includes, its single connected account included. Nobody's price went up: every plan in force was assigned by hand or bought on AWS Marketplace, and this rule does not touch either. The bullets above stay as published; the current bands are on the pricing page and in Refine Plans Are Live.
One number decides your plan — and you can see it
Most usage-based pricing has a trust problem: the vendor meters something you can't verify. We picked the opposite. Your plan is set by your prior calendar month's AWS bill — the BilledCost total, after credits — which is the same number your Refine dashboard already shows you. The number on your invoice is the number on your screen. No hidden meters, no reconciliation arguments.
Why flat prices instead of a percentage of spend?
We seriously considered percent-of-spend pricing — it's common in this category. We rejected it for a simple reason: your Refine bill shouldn't wobble because your AWS bill did. A cost-optimization tool whose own price goes up when your costs spike is a strange incentive. Flat plans by band keep the invoice predictable and the pricing page readable — no calculator required.
The value math still works in your favor. Refine customers typically save 25–40% of their AWS spend. At $100 or $200 a month, the product should pay for itself many times over — and if it doesn't, you shouldn't pay for it.
A spike won't lock you out
This one matters to us. A sudden jump in AWS spend is often exactly the moment you need Refine most — a runaway job, a misconfigured autoscaler, an anomaly you want to chase down. So a single month over your band never walls off your data. You'll see a heads-up in the product; only sustained spend above the band moves you to the next plan. We built anomaly detection to catch cost spikes — we're not going to punish you for having one.
What stays free — on purpose
Our philosophy is simple: free lets you see the problem; paid lets you act on it at scale. The dashboard, the savings number, the AI report, anomaly alerts — those stay free, because a tool that hides your own cost data behind a paywall isn't a cost-optimization tool. The free bill analyzer also stays exactly as it is: drag in a bill, get a savings report in 60 seconds, no signup at all.
And to be equally plain about the other side: paid plans exist so we can keep shipping. Refine is built by an AWS Advanced Tier Services Partner, and the roadmap — deeper remediation, more integrations, longer retention — is funded by customers who pay, never by selling your data.
The full comparison, band definitions, and FAQ are on the pricing page. If anything there reads as unclear or unfair, tell us — the page was designed to survive that conversation.