Changing your plan shouldn’t come with billing surprises. That’s why we use pro-rata billing as implemented by our payment processor, FastSpring.
How proration works for upgrades
When you upgrade your plan mid-cycle, FastSpring calculates the difference between your old and new plans and applies an instant adjustment.
Depending on the case, this may result in:
- A small charge for the difference
- Or no additional cost at all
This means you won’t be charged twice, and you won’t lose money if you change plans mid-month.
More precisely, proration handles the increase of the subscription price when a price changes during any period of a subscription.
We calculate the value you did not use from the original subscription plan (based on the number of days remaining before renewal).
Separately, we calculate the value of the remaining days of the new plan (at the new rate), and then you receive the adjustment.
Calculation example for an upgrade
You’re on a $20/month plan and upgrade to a $40/month plan halfway through your billing cycle:
- We’re keeping track of the unused portion of your $20 plan (~$10).
- You’re billed the prorated remainder of the $40 plan for the rest of the billing cycle (~$20).
You only pay the difference at the time of upgrade
Calculation example for a new plan
If you're upgrading to a plan with the same billing cycle (like monthly to monthly) or a longer one (like monthly to yearly), you'll only pay for the remaining days of the new plan.
Here’s how it works:
We take the price of the new plan and multiply it by the portion of the billing cycle that's left.
For example, if you're upgrading from a monthly plan to a $100/year plan on January 16, the charge would be:
$100 * (365 - 16) / 365 — so you'd only pay for the rest of the year.
But if you’re switching to a plan with a shorter billing cycle than your current one (like going from yearly to monthly), you’ll be charged the full price of the new plan up front.
Example of calculation for refunding an old plan
When you change your subscription, we don’t just charge for the new plan, we also refund part of your old one as part of the pro-rata billing.
Here’s how that refund is calculated:
We take the price of your current plan and multiply it by the number of unused days left in your billing cycle, divided by the total number of days in that cycle.
Example:
Let’s say your monthly plan started on January 1 and cost $10. If you switch to a yearly plan on January 16, you’ll get a refund for the unused days like this:
$10 * (16 / 31) — a partial refund for the first half of the month.
Shipping fees (if any) are also prorated the same way.
Track your billing history
Want to see when and how your plan changed?
You can always go to My Account → Invoices & billing and check your plan and invoice history.
