PixelVault has been free to use since the start. Today there are two paid plans for the people who've outgrown the free limits: Starter at $9/month and Pro at $29/month. This post is the plain version of what that means: what changes, what doesn't, and how billing works.
What stays the same
The free plan keeps the features, not just a teaser of them. Image transforms, signed private links, CI screenshot hosting, the paste-and-host embed and the API are all on the free plan, with the same endpoints and the same URLs. If free is enough for you, nothing about your account changes.
Two promises hold on every plan:
- No egress fees. Views of your images aren't metered into a bill. A plan's price is the price.
- Your images are yours to take. A full export of everything you've uploaded, as a tar archive, is available on every plan, including free, at any time. There is no "export" tier.
What the paid plans give you
Paid plans are about room, not about locking features away:
- Starter ($9/month): 5 GB of storage, 25,000 uploads a month, 25 GB of bandwidth, unlimited private images, files up to 32 MB, and email support.
- Pro ($29/month): 25 GB of storage, 50,000 uploads a month, 50 GB of bandwidth, unlimited private images, files up to 64 MB, and priority support.
- Everything is kept. On the free plan, images that sit unused for a long time may be cleaned up (the pricing page has the exact rule). Paid plans keep everything.
For comparison, the free plan is 200 MB, 500 uploads a month, 1 GB of bandwidth, 100 private images and 5 MB files. It's enough to try PixelVault properly and to run a small project.
Hitting a limit doesn't turn into a surprise charge. You get an email at 80% and 100%, and uploads stop at the limit, so the bill never depends on a spike.
How billing works
- Upgrade from your dashboard. Pick a plan, pay on Stripe's checkout page, and your plan switches within seconds. Your API keys and image URLs don't change.
- Monthly, in advance, through Stripe. Your card details go straight to Stripe; PixelVault never sees them.
- Cancel whenever you like. From Manage billing in the dashboard. Your plan stays active until the end of the period you've paid for, then your account returns to the free plan. If you went over the free bandwidth limit, your images keep being served for 14 days before it applies.
- Invoices for the company. You can add a company name at checkout or later in the billing portal, and every payment produces an invoice and a receipt you can download there.
- A 14-day refund on your first payment. If PixelVault isn't right for you, email hello@pixelvault.dev within 14 days and you get your money back.
The details, including failed payments and what happens when you go back to free, are on the billing page.
Why paid plans at all
PixelVault is a small product I build and run myself. Storage, bandwidth and the edge network cost real money, and free-only isn't a plan I can sustain. I would rather charge a small, flat, predictable price to people who get real value out of it than add limits or ads for everyone. That's also why the price is flat: it doesn't change when your traffic does.
If you're on the free plan today
You don't need to do anything. If you're getting close to a limit, the dashboard shows it, and you can upgrade from the same page. If you have questions about which plan fits, write to hello@pixelvault.dev.