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Plans and periods

A plan is how you reserve an instance type: its period, its price per period and its booking rules.

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A plan is an offer to reserve machines of one instance type for a given period, at a price per period. Every card in the catalog is a plan. When you press Reserve, you reserve through that plan.

Periods

The period is the unit you reserve in. At launch every plan is daily; hourly, weekly and monthly plans may follow.

A reservation is a number of consecutive periods: three days in a row, for example. You choose the first and the last on the calendar.

What a day covers

All days are UTC days. A daily reservation:

  • starts at 00:00 UTC on its first day, and
  • ends at 23:59 UTC on its last day.

So a reservation for Tuesday 22 to Thursday 24 September runs from Tue 22 Sep 00:00 to Thu 24 Sep 23:59 UTC — three full days.

If you're not in the UTC time zone, convert before you book. For example, 00:00 UTC is 01:00 in Dublin and London during summer time, 02:00 in Paris, and 17:00 or 20:00 the previous evening on the US west and east coasts during daylight saving time.

Price

Each plan has one price per period, in euros, pounds and US dollars. You pay in your country's currency: see Payment, currencies and VAT.

The cost of a reservation is the price per period times the number of periods, plus VAT where it applies. Every period costs the same: there are no peak days and no discounts for length.

Booking rules

Each plan has a few rules about when and how much you can book:

  • the lead time — how soon a reservation can start,
  • the reservation window — how far ahead you can book,
  • the maximum number of periods in one reservation, and
  • the concurrent limit — how many current or upcoming reservations you can hold on the plan.

The catalog shows them on each card, for example "Book 1–5 days · at least 1 h ahead · up to 8 weeks out". Lead time, window and limits explains each one.

Plans share machines

Several plans can offer the same machines. A booking through any plan blocks that machine for every plan, so the calendar only ever shows a day as free when a machine really is free.