Billing
How PostZen pricing works: per-account graduated rates, daily proration, usage thresholds, and X API pass-through.
PostZen bills for one thing: each connected social account, per month. Every feature is included at every size — scheduling, the media pipeline, managed OAuth, and full API, MCP, and CLI access. There are no seats, no feature gates, and no plans to compare. Your first two accounts are free and don't require a credit card, so you can build and test an integration end to end before you ever add a payment method.
Per-account rates
Pricing is graduated: accounts get cheaper the more you connect, and each account is priced by the band it falls into rather than one flat rate across the board.
| Accounts | Price per account / month |
|---|---|
| First 2 | Free |
| 3–10 | $6 |
| 11–100 | $3 |
| 101–2,000 | $1 |
| 2,001+ | Custom — contact us |
Graduated means the bands stack, so adding accounts only ever lowers your average price. For example, 25 accounts costs 2 free + 8 × $6 + 15 × $3 = $93/month, not 25 × $3. To try different account counts, use the interactive calculator on the pricing page.
Daily proration
You only pay for the days an account is actually connected. The billable unit is the account-day: every account with a status of connected or needs_reauth accrues one account-day per UTC calendar day.
At the end of each day, PostZen converts account-days into billable units for the month:
billable_units = account_days ÷ days_in_monthSo an account connected for half of March costs half of one account's monthly rate. Billing periods are calendar months in UTC.
Accounts in needs_reauth still accrue account-days — they're holding their slot, history, and scheduled posts while you re-authorize. If you don't want to pay for an account, disconnect it; a disconnected account stops accruing on the day you disconnect it.
The free allowance
Your first two accounts are free. Mechanically, that free tier is a $12/month usage credit — the equivalent of two accounts at the $6 rate — applied to your account-based charges each billing period. The credit applies to your gross account usage only; it never offsets X API pass-through charges.
The free tier is also where the payment-method gate sits:
- Your first two accounts require no payment method at all.
- Adding a third account, or connecting any X (Twitter) account, requires a card on file. X requires a card even if it would be your first account, because it can incur pass-through charges.
- API and MCP attempts to connect beyond the gate without a payment method return HTTP
402.
Worked example
Suppose you start June with 4 connected accounts and connect a 5th on June 16 (a 30-day month).
Count account-days. The original 4 accounts run all 30 days; the 5th runs 15 days: 4 × 30 + 1 × 15 = 135 account-days.
Convert to billable units. 135 ÷ 30 = 4.5 billable units for the month.
Price the units. All 4.5 units fall inside the first paid band (the first 10 accounts, at $6): 4.5 × $6 = $27 gross.
Apply the free credit. Subtract the $12 allowance: $27 − $12 = $15 — so $15 is due for June, plus any X pass-through.
When your card is charged
PostZen doesn't send a single invoice at the end of the month. Usage accrues continuously, and your card is charged (through Stripe) whenever your accrued spend crosses a threshold.
The first threshold is $10. Each time a threshold charge succeeds, the threshold doubles — $10 → $20 → $40 → $80 → … up to a ceiling of $5,120. New accounts are protected by small first charges, while established accounts aren't billed constantly.
Failed payments
If a threshold charge fails, you'll see a banner in the dashboard and service continues during a 2-day grace period. If the balance still isn't settled after the grace period, scheduled publishing and API posting pause until it is. Paused days don't accrue account-day charges, so you're never billed for time the service was stopped.
X (Twitter) API pass-through
X charges developers for API usage. PostZen passes those costs through at X's exact rates with zero markup, billed alongside your account usage.
| Request type | Rate |
|---|---|
| Post reads (posts, lists) | $0.005 |
| User reads & follows | $0.010 |
| Post sends | $0.015 |
| Posts containing a URL | $0.200 |
Media upload and token-refresh calls are metered so you can see them, but they're never billed. The $12 free credit applies to account usage only — it does not reduce X pass-through charges.
Common questions
What happens if I connect and disconnect an account mid-month? You pay only for the days it was connected. Because billing is measured in account-days, a mid-month connect or disconnect is prorated automatically — no full-month charge either way.
If I reconnect the same account, do I pay twice? No. Account-days are counted at day-level granularity, so the same account on the same day is a single account-day no matter how many times it disconnects and reconnects.
How do I know which band an account is in? You don't have to think about it. Bands apply to your total billable units, and PostZen always fills the cheapest ordering automatically. Adding accounts can never make an existing account more expensive.
Where can I see my current usage and projected cost? The dashboard shows your live accrued cost, projected month-end cost, a per-band breakdown, and your next charge threshold.
Do you offer refunds? Yes — there's a 30-day money-back guarantee.
What payment methods do you accept? Cards, processed securely through Stripe.