Billing Policy

This page explains exactly how charges, credits, and changes work at Tenux. We want it to be boring and predictable: no surprise charges, no hidden resets, and nothing that contradicts what you saw on the pricing page. Stripe is our financial system of record — it holds your card details, processes every charge, and stores your invoices.

1. What you can pay for

Tenux has one free tier, a $7 subscription, and two optional paid add-ons. You can buy AI credits on any account — free or paid — but a cloud VM requires an active subscription.

Free — local / same-network access only. No subscription, no card on file, no charges. You can reach a device only from the same network it is on; remote access requires the subscription below.
Tenux subscription — $7/month — remote access to your machines from anywhere via our managed relay, unlimited linked devices (each with its own workspace URL), and a 100 GB pooled bandwidth allowance shared across all your device tunnels. Cancel anytime.
AI credits — an optional, one-time prepaid top-up used to run Tenux Chat. Or use your own AI provider API key, set on your computer, for free.
Cloud VM rental — an always-on rented cloud machine. It requires an active $7 subscription and bills as a recurring line item on it (not a separate subscription), at a flat monthly fee derived from the configuration you build. Not available on the free tier. New Cloud VM rentals may be paused at times; the pricing page shows whether they’re available. These terms apply to any VM you rent.

2. Your billing day

When you first subscribe, that calendar date becomes your billing day, and you’re charged the $7 subscription on the same day each month. Changes during a cycle never move your billing day. If you add a cloud VM to a subscription you already have, we charge you right away for the part of the current cycle that remains (a prorated amount), and the VM’s full monthly price is included on each invoice after that (see §5). AI-credit top-ups are billed separately — each is a one-time charge with its own receipt, not a line item on your subscription invoice — so they are not tied to your billing day.

3. Pooled bandwidth and overage

Your $7 subscription includes 100 GB of pooled bandwidth per billing cycle, shared across all the device tunnels and any cloud VMs on your account — one pool for your whole account, not a separate allowance per device or per VM. We meter how many bytes move across your tunnels and relay — never their contents.

Overage is on by default. So your remote access and cloud VMs keep working past 100 GB, your account is opted in to overage by default: bandwidth beyond 100 GB is billed at 10¢ per GB, added to your next invoice (or, in your final billing cycle, billed when your subscription ends — see §6), up to a monthly cap you control ($10 by default, raisable to a maximum of $100). We disclose these terms and ask for your explicit agreement at checkout, before you pay — overage is never a surprise. We also email you as you approach your allowance (around 50%, 80%, and 90%).
You can turn overage off at any time from your billing settings. If overage is off and you reach 100% of your 100 GB allowance, your remote relay access is paused for the rest of the cycle instead of billed — we never silently charge you for going over. It resumes automatically at the start of your next cycle, or immediately if you turn overage back on or upgrade. (Your local / same-network access is unaffected.) Turning overage off does not erase overage you have already used this cycle — any overage accrued before you turned it off is still billed.
Safety ceiling. Even with overage on, there is a high usage ceiling above which we pause your access rather than keep charging without limit, so your cap is a true maximum.

The per-GB overage rate is current as of the date above and may be adjusted with advance notice; the rate and cap in effect are shown at checkout when you agree to the overage terms.

4. AI credits (prepaid top-up)

Tenux Chat runs on AI credits. You have two ways to power it, and you never need both:

Bring your own key: set your own AI provider API key on your computer with tenux ai keys and pay that provider directly. This costs you nothing at Tenux, and our servers don’t store the key.
Buy Tenux credits — a one-time top-up of $20, $50, or $100. This is a prepaid purchase, not a subscription — nothing recurs and nothing is “used or lost” each month.

The terms that govern Tenux credits:

Credits are a prepayment for one specifically identified service: Tenux Chat, Tenux’s AI chat agent. They buy you that service and nothing else: they are drawn down in real time as you run Tenux Chat, are tied to your account, and cannot be transferred to another account or person. This is a prepaid service arrangement, not a general-purpose gift card or stored-value account.
Because credits are prepayment for a service you consume as you use it, they are non-refundable and are not redeemable for cash or other goods, except where applicable law requires otherwise.
Credits do not expire. Once you buy them, your balance stays available to spend on Tenux Chat for as long as your account is open — there is no expiration date, and nothing is forfeited for non-use. We show your current balance and usage in your account so you can spend what you have bought whenever you like.
Small balances. As a courtesy, if your remaining purchased-credit balance is under $15 and you would rather have it back than spend it, email [email protected] and we will refund it to your original payment method. Promotional credits (like the $5 trial) are not refundable.

Auto-reload (optional)

Auto-reload is off by default — we never charge your card off-session unless you deliberately turn it on. You can enable it so Tenux Chat keeps working when your balance runs low. If you turn it on:

You authorise Tenux, via Stripe, to charge your saved payment method off-session (without you being present) to top your balance back up when it falls below the threshold.
You choose the reload amount — from $20 up to a maximum of $100 per charge — and you can change it at any time. We charge exactly the amount you set, and only when your balance falls below your threshold.
You can turn auto-reload off at any time from your account. Credits added by auto-reload are governed by the same terms as any other purchased credits above — non-refundable, drawn down as you use Tenux Chat, and they do not expire.

$5 trial credit

When you start your first $7 subscription, we grant you a one-time $5 trial credit so Tenux Chat works out of the box. The trial credit is promotional — granted to you at no charge, with no money or other value given in exchange. It is non-refundable, is granted once per user (on a paid subscription only — it is not available on the free tier), and does not auto-convert into a charge or a recurring purchase.

5. Cloud VM rental

A cloud VM is an optional, always-on rented machine — a true cloud dev environment that stays up even when your own computer is off. It requires an active $7 subscription and is billed as a recurring line item on it, not a separate subscription.

Flat fee from your build. There are no tiers or presets. You choose CPU, RAM, disk, and region, and the monthly price is derived from that configuration. “Flat” means predictable: one steady monthly number for the build you chose, not one price for everyone.
Adding a VM keeps your billing day (see §2). On an existing subscription you pay now for the rest of the current cycle, prorated, then the VM’s full monthly price each billing day. If adding a VM is what starts your subscription, that day becomes your billing day and your first month is charged in full.
Removing or resizing a VM never moves your billing day. Making a VM bigger charges the prorated difference for the rest of the current cycle right away. Removing a VM or making it smaller gives no refund and no credit for the part of the cycle you’ve already paid for; the lower price starts on your next billing day.

A cloud VM’s bandwidth counts against the same 100 GB account pool as your device tunnels — there is one pool for your whole account, not a separate allowance per VM. The same account-level overage terms from §3 apply: past 100 GB, bandwidth (whether from a device or a VM) is billed at 10¢ per GB up to your cap, with overage on by default, because a rented always-on box shouldn’t stop working mid-task. If you have turned overage off and your account reaches 100% of the pooled allowance, your VM is stopped, not deleted — its data is preserved on its volume — and it resumes at the start of the next cycle, or as soon as you turn overage back on or upgrade.

6. Cancellation

You can cancel from your account at any time — it’s self-serve, with no email or phone call required. Cancellation is scheduled to take effect at the end of your current cycle: you keep using everything you paid for until then, and we don’t pro-rate or refund the unused remainder of the cycle.

Your subscriptions renew automatically each cycle until you cancel. You can cancel directly from your account settings — no email or phone call required — and we’ll confirm by email. We send a receipt for every charge, and if we ever change a price, we’ll give you advance notice (see our Terms) so you can cancel first if you don’t want the new price.

Until your cycle ends:

Your remote access and pooled bandwidth stay available.
Your linked devices stay linked.
Your cloud VMs keep running.
Your AI credits remain available to spend — they never expire.

When the cycle ends:

Any bandwidth overage you accrued in that final cycle is billed at that point. If overage is on and you went past your 100 GB pooled allowance during your final cycle, we invoice the accrued overage to your payment method on file when the subscription ends, since there is no next monthly invoice to carry it. This is the same metered usage you agreed to at checkout — the same 10¢/GB rate, and never more than the monthly cap you set. If you never had overage on, there is nothing to bill and no charge — cancelling doesn’t change that. (As §3 says, turning overage off mid-cycle still bills the overage you accrued while it was on.) An accrued amount under $0.50 is too small to charge on its own, so we don’t bill it (if you later re-subscribe, that small remainder may appear on your first invoice).
Remote relay access ends and your account returns to the free (local / same-network only) tier.
Your Cloud VMs and their volumes are permanently deleted, and cannot be restored. When you choose to cancel, a Cloud VM is an always-on machine you’ve stopped paying for, so at the end of your cycle we delete it — the machine and its data volume are gone for good, with no 30-day hold. Download anything you want to keep from a Cloud VM before your cycle ends. We warn you about this when you cancel, and your cancellation email confirms the data was deleted.
Your prepaid AI credits are kept — your remaining balance stays in your account and never expires, so you can spend it on Tenux Chat whenever you like. Nothing is forfeited for non-use (see §4).

If your subscription lapses because a payment fails — rather than a cancellation you chose — we treat it as recoverable instead of deleting right away. Your Cloud VM is stopped (its remote access paused) and its volume is kept for 30 days, so you can pick up where you left off if you fix your payment method or re-subscribe within that window. After 30 days the volume is permanently deleted.

7. Refunds

Tenux does not issue cash refunds. This applies to cancelled subscriptions, stopped or removed VMs, prepaid AI credits (including the trial credit and any auto-reload), and any other partial-period change. We don’t give refunds or credits for the unused part of a cycle.

Nothing in this Billing Policy waives any non-waivable rights you have under California consumer-protection law. Where applicable law requires a refund, cash-back, or different treatment of prepaid credits, that law controls.

We’re upfront about this so you can decide before subscribing or topping up. If you have a billing question, email [email protected] and we’ll work through it with you.

8. Replays and idempotency

On the engineering side, every billing event is processed exactly once. If Stripe replays a webhook, we won’t double-charge you, double-grant credits, or double-spawn a VM. You should never see a duplicate charge from us. If you do, report it to [email protected] and we’ll fix it within one business day.

Questions

Anything unclear? Email [email protected] for billing and refund questions, or [email protected] for general support. See also our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.