Account
Billing & Plans
Beacon offers a free tier for small projects and a Pro plan for teams that need higher limits, faster monitoring intervals, and custom branding. All billing is handled through Stripe.
Plans overview
| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $0 | $29/mo or $290/yr |
| Status pages | 1 |
10 |
| Monitors | 5 (5-min interval) |
50 (1-min interval) |
| Team members | 3 |
Unlimited |
| Subscribers | 100 |
Unlimited |
| Webhooks | 2 |
Unlimited |
| API tokens | 2 |
Unlimited |
| Maintenance windows | 3 |
Unlimited |
| Owned workspaces | 1 |
5 |
| Custom domains | No | Yes |
| Widget branding | "Powered by Beacon" | Removable |
How billing works
Beacon uses Stripe for all payment processing. There are two touchpoints:
- Stripe Checkout — Used when you subscribe to a new plan. You are redirected to a Stripe-hosted checkout page to enter your payment details.
- Stripe Customer Portal — Used to manage an existing subscription. From the portal you can update your payment method, view and download invoices, switch between monthly and annual billing, or cancel your subscription.
Beacon receives subscription updates in real time via Stripe webhooks. Your workspace plan is updated automatically -- no manual steps are required after completing checkout.
Upgrading
To upgrade from Free to Pro, navigate to your Dashboard and open the Billing page. Select the Pro plan and click the upgrade button. You will be redirected to Stripe Checkout to complete payment.
Once payment is confirmed, your workspace limits are increased immediately. All Pro features -- including faster monitoring intervals, custom domains, and the ability to remove widget branding -- become available right away.
Downgrading
You can cancel your Pro subscription at any time through the Stripe Customer Portal. When the current billing period ends, your workspace reverts to the Free plan.
If your usage exceeds the Free plan's limits at the time of downgrade -- for example, you have 4 status pages when the Free plan allows 1 -- your workspace enters read-only mode. You will need to reduce your usage to within the Free plan limits before you can create or edit resources again.
Payment failures
If a subscription payment fails, Beacon does not immediately restrict your workspace. Instead, a 7-day grace period begins:
- During the grace period — Your workspace remains fully writable. All features continue to work normally. Stripe will automatically retry the payment.
- After 7 days — If the payment has not been resolved, the workspace enters read-only mode. It remains read-only until the payment succeeds or you update your payment method in the Stripe Customer Portal.
Beacon sends email notifications to the workspace owner when a payment fails and again before the grace period expires.
What "read-only" means
When a workspace is in read-only mode, the following restrictions apply:
- You can view all existing data: status pages, components, incidents, monitors, and subscribers.
- You cannot create or edit incidents, components, monitors, status pages, or any other resources.
- API requests that attempt to write data will receive a
403response. - Your public status pages remain live and accessible to visitors.
- Existing monitors continue to run but will not create new incidents if they detect failures.
To exit read-only mode, resolve the billing issue by updating your payment method or upgrading your plan. Write access is restored immediately once payment succeeds.
Annual billing
The Pro plan is available with annual billing at $290 per year, a 17% savings compared to paying monthly ($348 per year at $29/month).
You can choose annual billing when you first subscribe, or switch from monthly to annual at any time through the Stripe Customer Portal. When switching, Stripe prorates the remaining balance of your current billing period and applies it as a credit toward the annual subscription.