Credit Depletion & Resource Protection

Barrack AI uses per-minute billing for all resources. When your credit balance is depleted, a grace period system protects your resources and gives you time to add credits before any action is taken.

How Billing Works

All resources — virtual machines, volumes, and snapshots — are billed every minute. The per-minute rate is calculated as:

per_minute_rate = hourly_rate / 60

Each minute, the billing service deducts the per-minute cost from your credit balance in your preferred currency (USD, EUR, or INR).

What Happens When Credits Run Out

When your balance goes negative, your resources are not immediately deleted. Instead, a grace period begins.

Grace Period

Your resources continue running while your balance is negative. Billing continues during this period, meaning your negative balance will increase over time.

The grace period ends — and all resources are permanently deleted — when either of the following thresholds is reached (whichever comes first):

Threshold	USD	EUR	INR
Balance cap	-$10.00	-€10.00	-₹500.00
Time cap	24 hours	24 hours	24 hours

Once either threshold is hit, all your active resources are terminated immediately and irreversibly.

Warning Emails

Two warning emails are sent during the grace period:

Email 1 — Low Balance Warning

Sent the moment your balance first goes negative. This email includes:

Your current negative balance

The number of active resources at risk (VMs, volumes, snapshots)

The termination thresholds (balance cap and time cap)

A link to add credits

Email 2 — Final Warning

Sent when you are approximately 1 hour away from termination. This is triggered when either:

Your negative balance reaches 80% of the cap (-$8 / -€8 / -₹400), or

You have been in negative balance for 23 hours

This email explicitly states that your resources will be permanently deleted within the next hour if credits are not added.

Termination Order

When a termination threshold is reached, resources are deleted in the following order:

Virtual Machines — Deleted first (highest cost, stops billing accumulation fastest)

Volumes — Deleted second

Snapshots — Deleted last

What "Terminated" Means

Virtual Machines: The instance is permanently destroyed. All data on the VM is lost and cannot be recovered.

Volumes: The storage volume is permanently deleted. All data stored on the volume is lost.

Snapshots: The snapshot is permanently deleted. It cannot be used to restore a VM.

This action is irreversible. Once resources are deleted due to credit depletion, they cannot be recovered.

How to Prevent Termination

Add credits to your account before either threshold is reached. Once your balance returns to zero or above:

The grace period timer resets

All warning flags are cleared

No further warning emails are sent (until the next time your balance goes negative)

You can add credits at any time from your dashboard.

Summary

Event	What Happens
Balance reaches $0	Billing continues, balance goes negative
Balance first goes negative	Grace period starts, Email 1 (warning) sent
Balance reaches -$8 / -€8 / -₹400 or 23 hours negative	Email 2 (final warning) sent
Balance reaches -$10 / -€10 / -₹500 or 24 hours negative	All resources permanently deleted
Credits added, balance returns to $0+	Grace period resets, flags cleared

How Billing Works#

What Happens When Credits Run Out#

Grace Period#

Warning Emails#

Email 1 — Low Balance Warning#

Email 2 — Final Warning#

Termination Order#

What "Terminated" Means#

How to Prevent Termination#

Summary#