Billing and usage
Learn about Retool billing and usage for your organization.
Billing for Retool organizations is based on the following:
- Your organization's billing plan.
- The number of enabled users and their usage.
- Your organization's workflow usage.
- Whether your organization is billed monthly or annually.
Billing plans
Retool offers tiered, per-user billing plans that scale for your organization. You select a plan that fits your needs and then pay a monthly or annual subscription.
Admins can view and switch plans in your organization's Billing settings.
You cannot transfer subscriptions between Retool Cloud and Self-hosted Retool. For cloud billing, Admins can login to your subdomain or from the Retool login page, and go to Settings > Billing. For self-hosted billing, please visit the Self-Hosted Billing Portal. For more assistance with managing subscriptions between Cloud and Self-hosted, please contact our Support team.
User types
Retool bills at different rates according to user type and usage.
| Type | Description |
|---|---|
| Standard | Enabled users who built or edited an app or workflow during the billing cycle. |
| End | Enabled users who did not build or edit an app or workflow during the billing cycle. End users are billed at a lower rate than standard users. |
| External | End users who are not part of your organization. External users are billed based on custom pricing. |
These user types are only relevant to billing.
Standard and end user billing
Each billing cycle, Retool calculates the total number of standard and end users based on their activity in the month. This flexibility helps keep costs down as users who didn't build or edit apps and workflows are billed at a lower rate.
Organizations on the Business plan can restrict certain users from building or editing apps and workflows using permission groups. This would ensure those users are only billed at the reduced end user rate.
Users with sufficient access can build apps and workflows at any time. For example, a user with Edit permissions but who hasn't edited an app or workflow in a while would be considered an end user for billing purposes.
External users billing
External users are priced at lower, tiered rates on the Business plan. After 500 users, you do not pay any additional cost for external users.
However, usage for external use cases varies and the default pricing might not work for everyone. If you have custom pricing needs or want to explore our Enterprise capabilities, talk to our team to learn more.
Workflow usage
If your organization uses Retool Workflows, usage is calculated based on the total number of triggered workflow runs that completed successfully.
Refer to Retool's pricing page to learn more about pricing for Retool Workflows. If you exceed the number of allotted runs for your plan, Retool notifies you with in-app notifications as well as emails. Make sure to add workflows-billing@email.retool.com as a safe or recognized email address so that emails aren't added to your spam folder.
Billable runs
A run is considered billable if it successfully completed and was automatically triggered by one of the following:
- A webhook.
- A schedule.
- Another workflow.
- A query trigger.
- A web or mobile app.
Billable run examples
- A webhook-triggered workflow that runs whenever a payment is received using Stripe.
- A schedule-triggered workflow that runs daily at 9am to generate a report using Salesforce data.
- A workflow that is run from within another workflow.
- A workflow that is run from a Retool web or mobile app.
Non-billable runs
A run is considered non-billable if a workflow either:
- Fails to run successfully (e.g., an error occurred).
- Is manually run from the Workflow IDE.
- Is triggered by a Retool event.
Retool does not charge for non-billable run usage.
Non-billable run examples
- A workflow that failed because a query timed out and did not retrieve data.
- A workflow currently in development that is manually run from the Workflow IDE for testing purposes.
- A workflow that runs whenever a new user is invited to your Retool organization.
Usage monitoring
You can monitor workflow bandwidth, runs, and total number of active workflows for the current period in the Workflows tab of your Retool organization.
Agent usage
Refer to the following sections for more information about billing and usage for Retool Agents.
Billable and non-billable usage
Billable time
Billable time is counted from when an agent is triggered to when it returns an answer, excluding the time spent waiting for subagents, resource authentication, or human approval. Subagents will accrue their own separate billable time as they run individually. All agent runtime will be counted towards the hourly allocation, including if an agent fails to complete a task.
Non-billable time
Non-billable runtime is the time spent waiting for subagents, resource authentication, and human approval.
Estimating agent usage
The cost of running agents in production will depend on a few factors, including:
- How long one task takes: The efficiency of agent tools will affect the cost, runtime, and overall performance. Improvements in efficiency come from best practices of regular testing and usage of evals, reducing errors and failed runs, and making your tools faster and more precise.
- How many tasks you have: The volume of work your agent will execute will directly affect total runtime and overall costs.
- Which model you use: The pricing and runtime for each agent model will depend on the complexity of the specific task. Different models will have different pricing, and more advanced models are charged at higher rates to perform tasks.
Retool recommends that your initial usage starts with the free allocation per month. Our built-in dashboards and analytics on the monitoring page are available to monitor hourly consumption and identify peak usage patterns. We recommend conducting a usage review after a few weeks to more accurately forecast ongoing requirements and predict costs.
Usage monitoring
Admins of your organization can access the monitoring page located in the Agents tab to monitor runtime, cost, and token usage from each agent and filter to specific timeframes. Admins can compare and evaluate various models of agents side-by-side to understand the differences in tradeoffs between costs and performance. This allows for monitoring of usage and can help prevent unexpected billing overages.
Agent billing
Free usage
Each billing month, Retool organizations receive $50 of free agents usage. Retool Cloud organizations can get up to 20 hours of agents usage for free, depending on your chosen model.
The following free usage limits apply to the self-hosted preview release only. When agents are generally available for self-hosted organizations, all customers will be billed the standard $5/hour for BYOK usage beyond the $50 free limit.
The free usage for self-hosted organizations depends on your plan:
- Free plan: Self-hosted Agents is not available.
- Self-serve (non-invoiced) customer on Team and Business plans: Unlimited free usage with a self-managed LLM key.
- Committed (invoiced) customers on Business and Enterprise plans: 10 hours of free usage with a self-managed LLM key.
Once the free monthly limit is reached, payments will be required for further Agents usage for the rest of the billing month. Free customers will have the option to upgrade plans or wait until the next billing cycle starts to resume Agents usage.
Special terms apply for customers on Retool's Startup Program. Visit our Startup Program page for details.
Usage notifications
When an organization reaches 80% of its free usage, the organization's Admin(s) will receive an email warning them about reaching 80% of their free allotment for the month.
When an organization reaches 100% of its free usage, the organization's Admin(s) will receive an email warning them that they have reached their free usage allotment for the month.
If an organization is on the Free plan and exceeds the free usage for the month, in-progress agents will complete, and further execution will fail. The Admin(s) will be notified via email with an option to upgrade to a paid plan if they'd like to continue using Agents without interruption. Otherwise, Free organizations will wait until their next billing cycle starts to resume Agents usage.
Payment cycle
Team and Business plan customers will receive monthly overage charges for any usage beyond the free allotment. Please note: even for customers on an annual Retool subscription, Retool Agents overages are invoiced on a monthly basis.
Enterprise or custom contract customers should discuss payment cadence with their Account Manager, in order to pay in advance or purchase bulk Retool Agents usage.
Cost
Hourly prices vary based on which model is being used in each agent. Customers can use multiple models throughout the billing month.
Payment methods
For Team and Business customers, any out-of-pocket overages will be charged to the card on file and will show up on each monthly invoice. This applies to organizations on monthly or annual subscriptions.
For Enterprise customers, usage is charged via credits that are built into the contract.
For customers on Retool's Startup Program, visit our Startup Program page to see how Agents are covered by each program.
Invoice structure
Out-of-pocket usage will show up on monthly invoices with a different line item for each model used, for the amount of time (in seconds, rounded down to the nearest second). For example:
- Used an hour (4,799 seconds) of Agents with the claude-3.7-sonnet model from Anthropic
- Used 3 days (244,249 seconds) of Agents with the o3-mini model from OpenAI
- Used 5 hours (16,424 seconds) of Agents with your own key
Billing cycle
You can subscribe to Retool monthly or annually.
Charges for users added during a billing cycle are not prorated. End users that are upgraded to standard users during a billing cycle are charged at the standard-user rate.
Monthly billing
There are no upfront charges when you sign up for a monthly plan. At the end of each monthly billing cycle, Retool calculates standard- and end-user rates for the month, then bills you for the total amount.
Monthly billing example
A Retool organization on the Business Monthly plan has 15 enabled users during the month:
| Quantity | User rate | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard user | 5 | $65 | $325 |
| End user | 10 | $18 | $180 |
| Monthly total | $505 |
The Total amount billed at the end of the month is $505.
Annual billing
Annual plans allow you to lock in a discounted rate for a given quantity of standard users and end users by paying up front for a year. If you can closely approximate how many standard and end users you need each month, selecting an annual plan can help reduce your costs.
When signing up for an annual plan, you specify the quantity of standard users and end users for which you pay up front at checkout. For example, if you prepay for 15 standard users and 10 end users for a year, there are no additional charges provided your usage stays at or below these amounts each month.
Within each annual term, Retool bills for additional usage on a monthly billing cycle. At the end of each month, Retool calculates the number of standard and end users for that month. If the number of users of either type exceeds the amount purchased upfront, Retool bills your organization for the additional users at the monthly rate for that month.
You can add users to your annual commitment at any time by contacting Support. However, you cannot subtract users. Charges for added users will be prorated and based on the remaining time left of your annual subscription. You can add users to your annual plan by contacting our Support team.
Annual billing is available for all paid plans. This is an annual commitment and canceling will not result in a prorated refund for unused time. You can cancel your annual plan by contacting our support team.
Annual billing example
A Retool organization signs up for the Business Annual plan. They estimate their usage requires five standard users and 10 end users:
| Quantity | User rate | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard user | 5 | $50 | $250 |
| End user | 10 | $15 | $150 |
| Monthly total | $400 |
The total up-front cost for 12 months is $4,800.
During the first month, the Retool organization has 20 enabled users in total, which exceeds the up-front cost for 15 users. Additional users are billed at the Business Monthly billing rate:
| Quantity | User rate | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard user | 1 | $65 | $65 |
| End user | 4 | $18 | $72 |
| Monthly total | $137 |
The total amount billed for the additional usage at the end of the month is $137.
Billing methods
The billing methods available to you depend on the type of plan that you select.
- ACH (bank wire) payments are only available to Enterprise or Business Committed plan subscribers who have signed a contract agreement with Retool and have a designated account manager. Refer to your contract for more information.
- Team and Business plan subscribers who have NOT signed a contract agreement must pay with a credit card.
Change billing location and currency
You can update your billing location and currency from the lower right corner of your organization's Billing settings. Please note that this can only be changed before a subscription plan is selected.