---
title: "Plans & billing"
description: "What each plan includes, how the trial works, and what never sits behind it."
source: https://hiy.ai/docs/plans-and-billing
---

# Plans & billing

Two plans: **Free**, and **Founding Creator**. The numbers on the
[pricing page](/pricing) are rendered from the same place the product enforces
them, so a limit you were sold and a limit you hit are always the same number.

That page also answers every question about the two plans side by side — Free's
answer beside Founding's, in sentences rather than ticks, and where the two
behave identically it says so once. This page is the longer version: what
happens on the days the plan actually changes.

## The trial

When you publish your twin, a **14-day Founding trial starts** — no card, no
checkout, nothing to cancel.

It starts when your twin goes live rather than when you sign up, because setup
time isn't the product. If publishing sends your twin for an identity check,
the clock doesn't start until that clears and your twin is actually reachable
— trial days shouldn't burn while nobody can talk to it.

One trial per account, ever. Unpublishing and republishing doesn't start a
second one.

## When the trial ends

You go back to Free, and two of those changes are things you'll notice on a
working day:

- **The chat bubble stops loading on your own website.** The bubble embed is a
  Founding feature, so the script on your site stops serving. The inline embed
  and your hiy page both keep working.
- **Your allowance goes back to 300 messages a month**, down from 2,000 —
  shared across every twin on your account. If your twins pass 300 between them
  in a calendar month they stop answering visitors until the month turns over.

Then the smaller ones: our name comes back onto your page, and the paid
analytics close up.

**Nothing you've added is deleted or switched off.** If you'd built up more
than Free allows — say 40 sources against a limit of 5 — all of it stays, and
your twin keeps answering from every word of it. The Free limits apply when you
*add* something new, not to what's already there. Your conversations and
everyone on your People list stay exactly where they are, on any plan.

You'll get one email three days before — not a countdown series.

## Paying

Subscribing happens in **Settings → Plan & billing**, not on the pricing page.
Card details go straight to Stripe and never touch hiy; we keep an identifier
so we know what you're entitled to, and nothing about your card.

Cancelling, changing a card and downloading invoices all happen in Stripe's
billing portal, reachable from the same panel. There's no cancellation flow to
argue with.

## If a payment fails

Nothing is switched off. Stripe retries for a while, and until it gives up you
keep everything you had — a card that expired shouldn't take a live twin down
in the middle of a month. You'll see it in Settings and get one email with a
link to fix it.

## What no plan can take away

This is the part worth being explicit about, because it's the whole product:

- **Citations** on grounded answers, and the passage behind them.
- **The honest "I don't know"**, and the receipt showing what it searched.
- **The AI label** on every twin, everywhere.
- **The Report link**, so anyone can flag a twin that shouldn't exist.
- **The Verified badge**, which means the identity check and nothing else.
- **Your data.** Every conversation, every contact, every source is in your
  export on any plan, whenever you want it.

The only thing paying changes about how your twin *looks* is our name: the
"Powered by hiy.ai" line comes off, and the chat says "AI twin" instead of
"hiy". That's marketing credit, not honesty — and you can
[keep the credit](/docs/attribution) if you'd rather be credited for referrals.

## When hiy mentions the paid plan

Once, quietly, and only after something has actually happened — a follow-up
arrived, someone clicked your booking link, your twin ran through a month's
messages. **Never on a timer**, and never bolted onto the moment it bit: when
your twin runs out of messages it tells visitors so and stops, and the card
about it waits for you on your Overview rather than appearing in the
conversation that just got refused.

It does mention the limits, because pretending it doesn't would be its own
dishonesty: you'll see a card when you've used about 80% of a month's messages,
when you've used them all, and when your material is near the size limit. Those
are facts about your account that you'd want before a visitor finds them.

The rules it holds itself to:

- **One card at a time**, on your Overview, never anywhere else.
- **Dismiss it and everything goes quiet for a fortnight** — not just that one.
- **Dismiss three and it stops for good.** You can turn it back on in
  Settings → Plan & billing, where you can also turn it off before it ever
  asks.
- **It only claims what the plan actually includes.** No projections, no
  "creators like you", and never anyone's name — the card can sit on screen
  while you're screen-sharing.

## Running out of messages

Your plan includes a number of visitor messages a month, and it is **one
allowance for your whole account** — every twin you own draws from the same
pool. A second twin divides the month rather than doubling it.

Reach the limit and your twin says so, in plain words, and says **when it can
answer again** — the 1st of the next month, when the allowance resets. It does
not go quiet, it does not invent an answer to look busy, and it never shows a
visitor an error that reads like a login problem. On your embed, on somebody
else's website, that matters more than anywhere: a widget that breaks looks
like your site is broken.

And it isn't a dead end. Wherever your twin already collects an email — a
Support Agent's hand-to-a-person form, or any twin with follow-up capture
switched on — that form appears underneath, with the visitor's question kept
ready to send. If you collect nothing, nothing is collected: running out of
messages is not a reason to overrule a setting you turned off.

Your Overview and **Settings → Plan & billing** both count the month across all
your twins, so the meter you look at is the one the limit is checked against.

### Going over, on purpose or not at all

There is a switch for serving past the allowance — **metered overage** — and
three things are true about it, in this order:

1. **It is off.** Not "off unless", not "off until you're busy". Off, for every
   account, including yours. There isn't a control for it in Settings yet, and
   that's deliberate rather than unfinished: a switch that cannot buy anything
   is a switch that would only mislead you about what it does.
2. **It has a spend cap, and the cap always has a number.** There is no
   unlimited setting, and no way for an account to end up without a cap — not
   by being old, not by a setting failing to save, not by anything. A new
   account starts with a small one and can raise it; it cannot be emptied or
   removed. We're not quoting the figure here yet, because with no overage
   price a cap in dollars doesn't convert into a number of messages, and a
   number you can't act on is decoration. When the cap is reached the twin
   stops exactly as it does at the allowance — same words, same reset date,
   same form underneath.
3. **If we can't work out what a month cost, we stop rather than serve.** That
   sounds like our problem, not yours, and that's the point: the failure has to
   land on us. Serving on the assumption that the sums come right later is how
   people get invoices nobody can explain.

**None of it can charge you today.** Neither plan has an overage price, and
checkout isn't switched on, so there is no path from a busy month to a bill.
When that changes, this page changes with it — the price you'd pay would be
rendered here from the same place the product enforces it, like every other
number on it.

So: running out never silently bills you. It stops, it tells the visitor when
it'll be back, and it leaves them a way to reach you.