Economics: how exe.dev bills, with worked examples

You pay a fixed monthly subscription for a block of CPU and memory that your VMs share. On Work you also pay $0.105 for each 2 vCPU/4 GiB unit-hour above the included capacity, plus disk and outbound bandwidth beyond your allowance. Users and VM count cost nothing extra.

Every number on this page comes from https://exe.dev/pricing, https://exe.dev/docs/billing/overview, https://exe.dev/docs/billing/personal, https://exe.dev/docs/billing/work, https://exe.dev/docs/billing/usage, https://exe.dev/docs/standalone-vms and https://exe.dev/docs/pools, all checked 2026-10-23. Lines marked derived are arithmetic on those numbers, not quotes from exe.dev.

The bill has two parts

1. Subscription. A fixed monthly price, “paid in advance for the month ahead”.
2. Metered usage. Disk and outbound bandwidth beyond your allowance, standalone VMs, and on Work, pool capacity beyond what’s included. It’s billed at the end of each cycle (https://exe.dev/docs/billing/overview).

An active subscription is required to create and manage VMs. New accounts can link a paid ChatGPT subscription during signup for a free 7-day trial with no card. The trial starts when you create your first VM.

Rate card

Personal: one account, one pool

Every capacity includes 200 GB of outbound bandwidth and up to 50 VMs. Change capacity with billing capacity --cpu=N. The change is immediate and prorated (https://exe.dev/docs/billing/personal).

Work: teams, unlimited pools

The intro price is “50% off the base price only, once per team billing account”. Pool usage, disk, bandwidth, credits and taxes stay at their normal rates (https://exe.dev/docs/billing/work).

Metered extras (Personal and Work)

Standalone VM monthly equivalents (exe.dev’s own table, 730.5-hour month)

Metering “pauses while the VM is stopped, and ends when you delete it” (https://exe.dev/docs/standalone-vms).

Enterprise

Custom pricing. Pool capacity, standalone VMs, disk and bandwidth are “covered by your contract instead of metered”. The minimum contract is one entire host (https://exe.dev/docs/enterprise).

Formulas

Personal month   = tier price + max(0, avgDiskGiB − includedDisk) × $0.08
                              + max(0, egressGiB − 200) × $0.05
                              + Σ standalone (units × hours × $0.105)

Work month       = $75 (or $37.50 intro)
                 + max(0, concurrent units − 1) × hours × $0.105
                 + per-pool extra disk × $0.08 + per-pool extra egress × $0.05

units            = vCPU / 2        (1 unit = 2 vCPU / 4 GiB)

The Work formula treats the included 2 vCPU as applying to whatever is running at the same time, across pools and standalone VMs (https://exe.dev/docs/standalone-vms). The pools doc says the allowance, “including the 2 included vCPU”, belongs to a pool and doesn’t move between pools. For a multi-pool bill, check team usage [verify].

Worked examples (derived)

1. A solo developer with a few side projects

Personal 2 vCPU costs $15/month, covering up to 50 VMs sharing 2 vCPU and 4 GB, 100 GB of disk and 200 GB of egress. Nothing is metered unless you go over.

2. A heavy solo user who wants 8 vCPU

• Personal 8 vCPU: $75/month, with 400 GB of disk included.
• The same 8 vCPU as one Work pool all month: $75 + 3 extra units × $0.105 × 730.5 h = $75 + $230.11 = $305.11/month.

Lesson: for one person, Personal is much cheaper per vCPU. Work is what you pay for teams, SSO, unlimited pools and larger sizes.

3. A team of 10 on a 4 vCPU shared pool

$75 + 1 unit × $0.105 × 730.5 = $151.70/month in total, so about $15.17 per person (derived). The pools doc confirms the shape: “A team with one 4 vCPU pool pays the monthly price plus $0.105 per hour for the 2 vCPU above the included capacity”.

4. A CI burst week

Take a team on a 2 vCPU pool that grows it to 16 vCPU for 7 days (168 h): 7 extra units × 168 × $0.105 = $123.48 for the week, on top of $75. “A pool you grow for a busy week and shrink afterward costs extra for that week only” (https://exe.dev/docs/billing/work).

5. Agent sandboxes

200 jobs a month, each on a 4 vCPU standalone VM for 6 minutes: 200 × 2 units × 0.1 h × $0.105 = $4.20/month of metered compute. On Work, any part that overlaps unused included capacity costs less.

exe.dev’s own examples are a 2 vCPU VM for 10 seconds at “about $0.0003” and an 8 vCPU VM for 15 minutes at $0.105 (https://exe.dev/docs/billing/usage).

6. Disk and egress overage

A Personal 2 vCPU account averaging 150 GiB of disk and sending 300 GiB out: (150 − 100) × $0.08 + (300 − 200) × $0.05 = $4.00 + $5.00 = $9.00 extra, for $24.00 total. Note that the included disk is quoted in GB and the overage in GiB, so treat this as approximate.

TCO: a pool versus per-VM hosting (derived)

Per-VM hosts charge for every box, busy or idle, and most keep billing a stopped server until it’s deleted (https://www.hetzner.com/cloud/cost-optimized, https://www.linode.com/pricing/, https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/droplets/details/pricing/). exe.dev charges for the pool, and the boxes in it share CPU and memory (https://exe.dev/docs/pools).

Ten 2 vCPU / 4 GB boxes, always on, list prices checked 2026-10-23:

How to use this. The win depends on how idle the boxes are. If ten boxes rarely need more than 4 vCPU at once, the pool is cheaper than every per-VM option above except Hetzner’s Cost-Optimized line (€59.90 excl. VAT for ten CX23s, when in stock). If every box is busy around the clock, a per-VM host is cheaper on compute, and the case rests on the hours saved setting up TLS, auth and sharing for each box. Those hours aren’t priced here, because they vary by team.

The live calculator

The calculator at the top of this page uses the same numbers from src/data/pricing.json. It ignores tax and assumes a 730.5-hour month, as exe.dev’s pricing page does.

What isn’t priced here

• Shelley/LLM credits. These are bought separately at https://exe.dev/user/shelley. The current plans include no monthly credit (https://exe.dev/docs/billing/overview).
• Enterprise. Priced by contract.
• Competitor extras. The TCO table covers compute list prices only, not taxes, backups or egress overage. Full per-vendor detail and sources are on Competitive.