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Pricing FAQ

SQD Cloud uses hourly billing for compute resources and monthly billing for storage. You’re only charged for the actual time your squids are running.Billing cycle: Charges are calculated and billed on the first day of each month for the previous month’s usage.Prorated charges: If you deploy a squid mid-month, you only pay for the hours it actually runs. For example, a squid running for 360 hours (half a month) costs exactly half of the monthly rate.
You can monitor your current usage and estimated costs in the SQD Cloud dashboard at any time.
Collocated squids share compute resources with other squids on the same infrastructure. This makes them much cheaper ($0.02/hr vs separate service costs) but means performance is not guaranteed. If a neighboring squid experiences high load, your squid may become slow or unresponsive.Dedicated squids have guaranteed compute resources that are never shared. Each service (API, processor, database) runs on its own allocated resources with predictable performance.
We strongly recommend dedicated squids for production use. Collocated squids are perfect for development, testing, and staging environments.
Use our interactive cost calculator to estimate costs based on your configuration. You can also review real-world examples for common deployment scenarios.
Start with smaller profiles and monitor your actual resource usage. You can easily scale up if needed. It’s better to start small and grow than to overprovision from the start.
Yes! You can modify your squid’s compute profiles at any time using manifest-based deployments.Simply update your manifest file with the new profiles and redeploy. The new pricing takes effect immediately. See the profile reference for all available options and their specifications.
Profile changes require a brief redeployment. Plan accordingly for production squids to minimize downtime.
Database storage is billed at $0.50 per GB per month based on actual usage. This applies to both dedicated and collocated squids.Cost optimization strategies:
  • Implement data retention policies to remove old data you no longer need
  • Optimize your database schema to reduce redundancy
  • Use appropriate data types (e.g., integers instead of strings where possible)
  • Archive historical data to external storage (S3, BigQuery) if you don’t need it for queries
  • Monitor your storage usage in the Cloud dashboard
For data-heavy applications, consider a processor-only squid that exports to external storage instead of maintaining a large database.
Professional organizations include 2 million RPC requests per month at no additional cost through the RPC addon. This allows your squids to make blockchain RPC calls without managing your own RPC infrastructure.Overage pricing: If you exceed 2M requests, additional requests cost $2.00 per million.How to use: Configure the RPC proxy in your squid to route requests through SQD’s infrastructure. See the RPC addon documentation for setup instructions and rate limiting configuration.
When you hibernate a squid, all compute services (API, processor, database) are paused. You only pay for storage costs ($0.50/GB/month) while the squid is hibernated.Benefits:
  • Preserve your squid’s data and configuration
  • Eliminate compute costs when not needed
  • Resume quickly when you need the squid again
Perfect for:
  • Seasonal applications that aren’t needed year-round
  • Development squids used only during working hours
  • Backup squids kept ready but not actively running
Hibernation and resumption are instant operations. You can hibernate and wake squids as often as needed.
Choose based on your performance requirements and budget:Use collocated when:
  • Developing or testing new features
  • Running staging environments
  • Building proof-of-concepts or MVPs
  • Budget is the primary concern
  • Occasional slowness is acceptable
Use dedicated when:
  • Running production applications
  • Serving end users who expect consistent performance
  • Processing time-sensitive data
  • You need guaranteed response times
  • Reliability is critical to your application
Most teams use collocated for development and dedicated for production. This gives you cost-effective testing while ensuring production reliability.
No hidden fees! SQD Cloud pricing is transparent and predictable.What you pay for:
  • Compute (hourly rates for API, processor, database)
  • Storage (monthly rate per GB)
  • RPC requests (only above 2M/month)
What’s free:
  • Data egress (outbound traffic)
  • GraphQL API requests (unlimited)
  • SQD Network data access
  • Deployments and redeployments
  • Monitoring and logs
The only variable costs are compute time and storage. Everything else is included with no additional charges.
Yes! We offer enterprise plans with volume discounts, custom SLAs, and dedicated infrastructure for high-volume use cases.Enterprise benefits may include:
  • Volume-based pricing discounts
  • Custom SLA terms
  • Dedicated support channels
  • Architecture consultation
  • Priority feature requests
Book a demo to discuss your requirements and get a personalized quote.
Last modified on November 13, 2025