Yes, upgrades to your billing plan occur immediately, while downgrades will only come into effect at the end of the billing period. All modifications can be managed within the app.
Understanding FusionReactor's Billing Model
A comprehensive guide to how our pricing works and how to manage your costs
FusionReactor’s billing structure combines predictable base costs with flexible on-demand options. This approach gives you complete visibility into your applications while controlling your observability costs. Here’s what you need to know:
What is a Seat?
A seat refers to a unique virtual or physical host with up to four instances of Java/ColdFusion installed or up to four Docker containers.
For example, you’ll need two seats to monitor five to eight instances on a host. This clear definition helps you accurately estimate your monitoring requirements and associated costs.
When planning your FusionReactor deployment, consider the number of hosts you need to monitor and the number of instances running on each host. This will help you determine the number of seats required for your environment.
Usage Calculations
Both annual and monthly plan usage is calculated and billed each month, with different calculation methods for each resource type:
| Resource Type | Calculation Method |
|---|---|
| FR hours | Sum of all monitoring hours over the billing period |
| Metrics | Mean average of metrics for the billing period |
| Logs | Sum of all log data received over the billing period |
| Traces | Sum of all trace data received over the billing period |
| OpsPilot tokens | Sum of all OpsPilot tokens used over the billing period |
This transparent calculation ensures you understand precisely how your usage translates to billing.
On-Demand Flexibility
If you exceed the resources included in your plan, you’ll only be billed for the excess usage at our transparent on-demand rates. This ensures you have the observability data you need while maintaining cost control.
You’ll never lose access to critical monitoring capabilities if you experience unexpected traffic or need additional insights.
FusionReactor On-Prem provides a buffer against usage-based charges for customers wanting more predictable billing. Each seat allocates hours and resources to cover typical monitoring needs.
| Resource | Rate | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| FR Instance | $0.13 | per hour |
| Metrics | $10 | per 1K |
| Logs | $0.50 | per 1 GB |
| Traces | $0.50 | per 1 GB |
| OpsPilot Tokens | $20 | per 250 tokens |
| Snapshots/Profiles | $0.50 | per 1 GB |
Monitoring Your Usage with Usage Dashboards
To help keep things simple and transparent, FusionReactor has developed usage dashboards that allow you to track your billing data visually. You can also create alerts to fire if you exceed the allowed usage, giving you time to take action before incurring significant additional charges.
Data Usage Dashboard
This dashboard calculates the approximate usage of the FR instance, metrics, logs and traces. It displays the raw values or unedited data you have sent to FusionReactor, including:
- FusionReactor instance hours
- Maximum number of metric series
- Total logs ingested (GB)
- Total traces ingested (GB)
- Total OpsPilot tokens used
These values are shown both over the last 24 hours and the last 30 days.
Billing Usage Dashboard
Provides a breakdown of your billing usage into clearly defined sections:
- Plan cost
- Seat cost
- Additional usage cost
- Total cost
This dashboard also includes a pie chart showing your costs by category and detailed breakdowns for each data source, making it easy to see where your observability budget is going.
Data Usage Metrics for Billing
FusionReactor supports the following metrics for billing monitoring:
- fr_usage_minutes: The amount of time used by running FR instances (per minute)
- fr_logs_bytes_received: The amount of logs ingested into your account (per hour)
- fr_traces_bytes_received: The volume of traces ingested into your account (per hour)
- fr_metrics_series_count: The number of metric series ingested into your account (per hour)
- fr_billing_charges_metered: Provides a breakdown of on-demand usage
- fr_billing_usage: Calculates the amount of data to be billed
- fr_billing_charges_total: Provides information on your current bill as a total
By tracking these metrics, you can create custom alerts and dashboards to monitor your usage against your plan limits, ensuring complete visibility into your observability costs.
Maximizing Value from Your FusionReactor Investment
Get the most out of FusionReactor with these cost optimization strategies and best practices:
Create Usage Alerts
Set up proactive alerts to monitor your resource usage and be notified when plan limits are approaching. This helps prevent unexpected on-demand charges.
Example Alert Setup:
Copy
Metric: fr_billing_usage
Condition: > 80% of plan limit
Notification: Email, Slack
Implement Telemetry Pipelines
Implement pipelines that filter, discard, route, and transform data before ingestion to control telemetry collection costs. This reduces storage costs while maintaining visibility into critical systems.
Optimize Log Collection
Be strategic about which logs to collect and store. Focus on high-value logs that provide meaningful insights, and consider sampling for high-volume, low-value logs. This reduces storage costs without sacrificing observability.
Use FusionReactor On-Prem for Predictable Costs
If you’re an existing customer using on-premise monitoring, consider reserving FusionReactor On-Prem seats to protect against usage-based billing. Each seat provides 750 hours of usage plus included metrics, logs, and traces.
Leverage OpsPilot AI Efficiently
While OpsPilot AI provides powerful insights, be aware that long, involved responses can consume more tokens. Structure your queries to be specific and focused to maximize the value from your token allocation.
From the UI, you can send requests, transactions, sub-transactions, and JDBC calls directly into OpsPilot to save time and tokens when creating a prompt that speaks directly to one of these. A list of template questions is also given.
Regular Usage Reviews
Schedule regular reviews of your usage dashboards to identify trends, optimize collection strategies, and ensure you’re on the most cost-effective plan for your needs.
Supported Technologies
