Billing & usage

Transit AI is a paid product from sign-up — three tiers, no free plan, no trial. This page covers how the AI budget works, what happens when you approach or hit your limits, and how Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) gives you an alternative path when you do.

The three plans

Plan	Price	AI models	Monthly AI budget	BYOK
Operator	$29/month	Easy + Medium	Lowest	Not included
Pro	$79/month	All models	Higher	$100 one-time unlock
Max	$199/month	All models	Highest	$100 one-time unlock

Annual billing is 12× the monthly rate — no annual discount. The choice between monthly and annual is “which invoice cadence do you prefer,” not “how much do you save.” Token costs dominate either way.

You can switch plans, cancel, or update payment details anytime from the account page — that opens our payment processor’s hosted customer portal, which handles prorations automatically.

What is the “monthly AI budget”?

Every subscription tier includes a monthly token allowance for AI queries. The AI in Transit AI uses large language models (Anthropic Claude, OpenAI GPT) that meter usage by input + output tokens. Your tier’s budget is the dollar amount we’ll spend on those tokens per billing period before stopping.

The exact dollar amount per tier is sized so token cost remains roughly 80% of what you paid for the subscription. The remaining 20% covers everything else: payment processing, identity, the proxy infrastructure, and our margin.

Usage doesn’t show as raw dollars in the app — instead the chat panel shows the percentage of your monthly budget consumed. Around 80% you’ll see a banner.

What happens at your limit?

This is the question that matters most when usage is high. There are three escalation points, each with a clear next step.

At ~80% of your monthly budget

A yellow banner appears in the chat panel: “You’ve used 80% of this month’s AI budget.” Four options open at this point:

Wait. Your budget resets at the start of the next billing period. If you’re at 80% and the period ends in a week, you might just want to coast.
Enable overage. Settings → Billing has an opt-in toggle. When on, the AI keeps running past your budget cap; usage past the cap bills at 1.25× the AI provider’s per-token cost, capped at 2× your monthly subscription price. So a $79 Pro plan with overage on would bill at most $158 above the base for a single month.
Switch to BYOK. If you’ve purchased the BYOK unlock on Pro or Max ($100 one-time, see below), flip the toggle in Settings → Billing to Use BYOK. From then on, the AI uses your own provider API key — your tokens, billed directly by Anthropic or OpenAI to your provider account. No Transit AI budget consumed.
Upgrade your tier. Move from Operator to Pro, or Pro to Max, from the account page. Upgrades pro-rate immediately; you pay the difference between what’s left of your current period and the new tier’s price.

At your budget cap (overage off)

A red banner appears, and the AI stops answering new queries. The chat panel explains why and offers the same options as above, minus “wait” — your budget is already exhausted. You can:

Wait until the billing period resets (same option as before, but now the AI is actually paused, not just warning you)
Enable overage and continue with metered billing
Switch to BYOK and continue with your own keys
Upgrade your tier for a larger budget

Existing SSH sessions are unaffected by the AI cap — the terminal still works normally. The cap only applies to the AI assistant.

At your overage cap (overage was on)

If you opted into overage and exhausted that too — i.e., you spent 2× your monthly subscription on token costs in a single period — the AI pauses for the rest of the period. Two options remain:

Switch to BYOK (if you have the unlock) and continue
Upgrade your tier for a larger budget

The 2× cap exists so a runaway prompt loop or compromised credential can’t drain an unlimited amount; we’d rather pause than surprise-bill you.

BYOK — Bring Your Own Key

The BYOK unlock is a one-time $100 purchase on Pro or Max that adds a toggle to your Settings: Use Transit AI (default — we provide the AI keys, metered against your budget) or Use BYOK (you provide an Anthropic or OpenAI key, AI charges go to your provider account).

When BYOK is on:

The AI uses the key you’ve enrolled in Settings → BYOK
Your token usage is billed by Anthropic / OpenAI directly to your account on file with them
Transit AI doesn’t see your provider key beyond passing it through to the provider per-request — the key isn’t stored on Transit AI’s servers
The Transit AI monthly budget isn’t consumed by BYOK requests

Use cases for BYOK:

Compliance. Some organizations require all AI calls to be billed to their own provider account for SOC 2 audit trail.
Heavy usage. A power user who routinely exceeds the included budget may find BYOK cheaper than tier upgrades + overage.
Existing credits. If you have unused Anthropic or OpenAI credits from a trial or partnership, BYOK lets you burn them down through Transit AI.

BYOK is not required for normal use. The default Transit-AI-funded path covers most network engineers comfortably.

Managing your subscription

The account page is the entry point. Click Manage subscription to open the payment processor’s customer portal, where you can:

Update payment method
Change plan (Operator ↔ Pro ↔ Max)
Cancel subscription (effective at period end)
View invoice history
Update billing address

Cancellations take effect at the end of the current billing period — the AI keeps working through the period you’ve already paid for. After cancellation, your SSH sessions still work; only the AI assistant becomes unavailable.

What if I change plans mid-period?

Upgrading (Operator → Pro → Max): The new plan takes effect immediately. You’re charged the pro-rated difference between what’s left of your current period and the new plan’s price. Your monthly AI budget jumps to the new tier’s larger allowance for the rest of the period, with whatever you’ve already used carried over.

Downgrading (Max → Pro, Pro → Operator): The new plan also takes effect immediately. The payment processor credits you for the unused portion of the higher tier and bills the lower tier for the rest of the period.

One thing to know about downgrading: your AI usage for the current period is measured against the new (lower) budget. If you’d already used a sizable share of the higher tier’s budget, you may find that your usage already meets or exceeds the lower tier’s cap. In that case the AI pauses for the rest of the period — same options apply (wait, enable overage, switch to BYOK, or re-upgrade).

The mental model is: your monthly AI budget is tied to the billing period, not the tier choice within it. Tier change adjusts the cap that period’s accumulated spend is measured against. We don’t reset the spend counter, so a downgrade-after-heavy-use doesn’t grant a fresh allowance.

The simplest pattern that avoids surprises: make tier changes at the start of a billing period rather than mid-period if you’re near your budget.

Refreshing the desktop after a plan change: the desktop app reads your subscription state at sign-in. If you change plans via the customer portal, sign out and back in on the desktop to pick up the new state. (We’ll lift this in a future release.)

Refunds

Refund requests are handled case by case. Reach out at support@transitai.app within 30 days of the charge and tell us what happened — we’ll work with you.

Pricing — current rates + sign-up
Getting Started — full sign-up walkthrough
Security model — how the AI is structurally prevented from reading your credentials or running arbitrary commands
FAQ — common pre-purchase questions