> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.apostra.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# Organization IU Rate Card
> How one Effective Rate Card defines pricing, access, rollover, and activity terms across your organization's workloads
The Organization IU Rate Card is the price list your organization will use for
Intelligence Unit (IU) activity across Apostra. It applies once at the
billing-organization level: buyer activity, Seller Account work, Murph, and other
IU-rated capabilities draw from the same plan and wallet.
The standard IU Rate Card is published in staging for a controlled pilot and
visible only to invited organizations. It remains unpublished in production
until the pricing and governing terms are approved, so no organization needs
to accept it in production today. Invited staging organizations can review and
accept the exact effective revision. For invited organizations, Plan & Billing
may show the accepted included-IU allocation, observed usage, and a display-only
forecast. The accepted Rate Card has the complete current activity schedule.
In the invited pilot, an admitted published activity may move the displayed
IU balance and appear as usage, while monetary charging, invoices, payment
collection, and renewal charging remain off. Entitlement enforcement remains
separately controlled. Existing accepted media-pricing arrangements are
unchanged. An IU Rate Card is not a prerequisite for buyer setup or media
buying outside the invited pilot.
## The simple model
* **Connect at no cost.** Connecting an account, discovering it, and mapping it
to an advertiser do not consume IUs.
* **Pay for IU-rated use.** When a capability has a published IU price, its
usage draws from your organization's one IU plan and wallet.
* **Commit for a volume discount.** A monthly commitment lowers the effective
price of the included IUs. Overage uses the metered rate.
* **Choose the package that matches the relationship.** A Rate Card plan can
combine pricing and IUs with contracted product rights, premium support, and
proposal defaults while the same wallet continues to price metered usage.
There is no separate buyer, Seller Account, Murph, or BYOBA plan. BYOBA—bringing or
building your own buyer agent—is simply one way to use the platform.
## Buying with Apostra
Advertisers can connect media accounts, create campaigns, and place buys for
free. Apostra takes 0% of media. You can work in Apostra, through your own
agent, or in your chat of choice. Availability depends on the accounts,
integrations, and sellers that support the request.
Optional Intelligence for planning, recommendations, and enhanced reporting is
currently in beta. The activity catalog sets Enhanced Reporting at 4 IUs per
connected account per billing period, although every plan in the current
template waives it. Customer-facing plan pricing for other buy-side
Intelligence activities is coming soon. Apostra shows the resolved price before
you opt in, and eligible activity draws from one IU wallet shared across your
organization.
Enterprise is a contact-us offer. A scoped agreement can include the Apostra
team operating Apostra for you, custom integrations, cooperative agent
development with forward-deployed engineers, dedicated human support, and
enterprise governance controls. The proposal or statement of work defines the
services, responsibilities, support commitments, and price. Ordinary product
support through Murph remains part of the product.
Connect & Buy covers one Buyer Account. **Business Manager** is for agencies
and teams that run many brands: it covers up to 100 Buyer Accounts under one organization, on one IU bill. It is a
private plan, offered through a Commercial Offer.
These are buy-side choices, not Seller Account plans. The Effective Rate Card
governs any IU activity your organization accepts, while a separate Enterprise
agreement governs contracted services.
## One Effective Rate Card
The Rate Card shown for acceptance is the complete commercial result for your
organization. Each plan on an exact published Rate Card revision is a complete
commercial package: its pricing and IU allowance, entitlements, support, and
proposal defaults travel together. It can incorporate one authorized adjustment
source:
* a corporate percentage adjustment;
* a promotion or referral code;
* a negotiated private package, such as 500 IUs for \$500; or
* an explicitly customized version of one published plan.
These are not separate terms scattered across the product. A Commercial Offer
or code distributes the terms; the resulting **Effective Rate Card** is what
you review, accept, and later see in Plan & Billing. It is versioned and
snapshotted with the acceptance record so a later edit cannot rewrite what you accepted.
Entitlements are enforced separately from billing, but the access bundle
and support included in a plan appear beside its price. A new Offer selects one
exact Rate Card revision and plan. It either uses the standard plan terms or
records an explicit customization with its reason and exact differences. The Offer
snapshots the resolved bundle revision, every canonical feature key it contains,
any premium-support package, and the resolved proposal. A later plan or bundle
revision cannot change an Offer already issued or a term already accepted.
Draft revisions also preserve their commercial lineage. A successor identifies
the published revision it carries forward; a deliberate fresh start records why
no predecessor terms apply. If an operator abandons an unpublished draft, Apostra
retains its terms, lineage, actor, timestamp, and reason as immutable audit
history. An abandoned draft is never published, offered for acceptance, or used
to price activity, and it does not alter any revision your organization accepted.
## Choosing a seller plan
For organizations enrolled in IU plan selection, the plan chooser groups seller
plans under **Listing** and **Merchandising**. Listing choices include **Listing** and **Listing +
Distribution**. Merchandising choices are the Agentic Media Company plans:
**Storefront agent** and **Storefront agent + Distribution**. The displayed price and included access always
come from the published revision offered to your organization. A plan name
does not set a price or change your accepted terms.
The available choices follow your organization's active products. A seller that
only lists its Sales Agent sees Listing choices. A seller whose storefronts are
all on Agentic Media Company can see both groups, because a Listing plan also
covers an Agentic Media Company storefront. A public plan for an organization
with several products must cover all of them, so an organization that also
holds Buyer Accounts or a sales agent offering sees only Merchandising choices.
If no public plan fits, the chooser offers **Get in touch**.
Your plan also decides which accounts the organization can hold:
| Plans | Accounts they hold |
| - | - |
| Buyer plans: Connect & Buy, Business Manager, Enterprise | Buyer Accounts only. Connect & Buy holds one; Business Manager holds up to 100; Enterprise holds what its terms state |
| Listing plans: Listing, Listing + Distribution, Enterprise — Listing | Seller Accounts only, on either seller product |
| Global Market Maker | Seller Accounts on either seller product, together with Buyer Accounts and a sales agent offering |
| Certified Agent Developer | A sales agent offering only |
| Agentic Media Company plans: Storefront agent, Storefront agent + Distribution, Enterprise — Storefront agent | Seller Accounts on Agentic Media Company, together with Buyer Accounts and a sales agent offering |
Adding a Buyer Account to a Seller organization on a Listing plan, for example,
needs an Agentic Media Company plan, and the change is refused until the
organization has one. Global Market Maker is the one exception: a private seller
plan that also covers Buyer Accounts and a sales agent offering, even when the
storefront is Listing only. See
[Which plan holds which accounts](/v2/setup/account-access#which-plan-holds-which-accounts).
**Enterprise — Listing** and **Enterprise — Storefront agent** are contact choices
for the applicable Listing or Merchandising group. They have no public price and cannot be accepted
as a zero-priced plan. Any private Commercial Offer prepared for your organization returns
to this same chooser for review and acceptance.
## Getting help with a plan
Select **Get in touch** in plan selection, including when public plans are
available. You can also open the chooser from **Plan & Billing**. A billing
administrator must send the request from their own account. Staff impersonation
and service tokens cannot send it on your behalf.
Add an optional message of up to 1,000 characters and select **Send request**.
Replies stay in the app. Your request is tied to the plans you were shown and
the plan choice you asked about. It does not accept a plan, change pricing or
access, or promise a response deadline. Retries of the same current request
are attached to the same commercial request.
After **Request received**, follow progress in **Your requests**, under **Help**
in Apostra, when tracking is available. If tracking is temporarily
unavailable, keep the reference when asking for an update. **Back to plans**
reloads the current offer. If the available plans changed, no request is sent.
Review the current plans, then send again.
During signup, **Get in touch** explains how to continue after account creation.
Nothing is sent anonymously. Finish creating your account, then send the request
from **Plan & Billing**. Seller signup does not ask for your seller product
separately. It shows every public plan that applies to a Listing-only Seller or
to an Agentic Media Company, and the plan you accept sets your starting product.
A Listing plan, or no paid plan, starts you as Listing only. A Storefront agent
plan starts you as an Agentic Media Company. You can change the product later
from Settings.
A paid plan you choose while creating a Seller account is accepted as part of
that signup, once your email address is verified, even though your Seller Storefront
is created a moment later in the same signup. The plan takes effect when signup
completes. Only an accepted plan sets your starting product. If your email is
not yet verified, or the plan you picked is no longer offered when you finish
(for example because the Rate Card changed while you were signing up), signup
finishes on the free pass-through terms as Listing only and asks you to choose a
plan again. To choose a Storefront agent plan after that, first switch to an
Agentic Media Company in **Settings → How would you like to sell?**.
## Rate Card plans
Rate Card revisions can contain public plans and private negotiated packages.
The seller templates use **Listing**, **Listing + Distribution**,
**Storefront agent**, and **Storefront agent + Distribution**. A template is an
unpublished starting point: an operator must approve and publish an exact
revision before it can be offered. Buyer and other product plans may also
appear when they cover your organization’s products.
Saving, enabling, and evaluating AI Business Rules is not an IU-rated activity.
Every plan in the current template waives Enhanced Reporting. Listing paths also
waive brief responses and qualifying non-social media buys. Merchandising
paths—the Storefront agent plans—keep the catalog's 1-IU defaults for brief
responses and qualifying media buys. The currently published staging standard
list remains **Pay as you go**, **250**, and **1,000** until a successor Rate Card
is published. Existing accepted plans remain readable and enforceable. The
commitment, included quantity, overage rate, activity terms, product rights,
support, and proposal defaults belong to the selected plan.
The standard USD commitments, included quantities, overage rates, and break-even
points are on one page — **[How IU billing works](/v2/buyer/billing/how-iu-billing-works)** —
along with a calculator and worked examples. That page is the standard USD list;
this page is about the exact revision and plan that govern *your organization*.
Usage only provides no included monthly IU allocation. Once production
billing is enabled, commitments will be billed at the start of each monthly
period; metered usage and committed-plan overage will be billed after the
period.
The standard sizes are **not yet published in production**, so they are not a
production offer today — they are available only where an effective Rate Card has
been published in your environment and shown to your organization. Your
confirmation always shows the exact version, term, list price, and effective
price that would apply to you in that environment. The same Rate Card includes the
complete activity schedule; several rows remain under calibration and are
marked non-billable below.
**Whatever the standard list says, your Effective Rate Card is the authority.** An
authorized corporate discount, a promotion or referral code, a negotiated private
package, or a customized Offer replaces the standard figures, and Plan & Billing
shows the list price and the effective price side by side before you confirm. If
your organization has been quoted something else, that quote — once it is an
Effective Rate Card you accept — is what governs your charges. Prices are also published per
currency rather than converted, so a card in EUR, GBP, or AUD carries its own
published numbers.
## Pricing adjustments and private offers
If Apostra has authorized a corporate discount for your organization, it applies
once across the plan—not separately to buyer and Seller Account activity. Before
you confirm, Plan & Billing shows the list price, discount, and effective price.
Discounts do not stack.
A negotiated package is shown as its own private Effective Rate Card, not as a
second hidden discount. For example, an Offer for 500 IUs at \$500 shows that
commitment, included quantity, and overage price directly. It also shows the
selected plan's entitlement bundle, support, and activities that are included
rather than IU-rated. The package price is the complete subscription economics;
there is no second “platform access” fee. Only one complete Offer is effective
for acceptance at a time.
A later discount or Rate Card change never rewrites an accepted term. Changes
apply through a new offer or successor term that you can review.
## Product access and premium support
When a plan includes product access, the Offer shows an immutable
bundle identity and revision plus the exact feature keys included. Apostra validates
those keys against its canonical feature registry before issuing the offer. An
unregistered feature, an alias in place of its canonical key, or a feature that is
not contract-gated cannot be issued as an authoritative entitlement bundle.
A plan can also include premium support. The Offer preserves one
of two simple forms: unlimited premium support, or a monthly premium package with
included hours. Additional support follows the Enterprise agreement or statement
of work; it is not an automatically metered IU activity. Coverage windows,
severity targets, onboarding allowances, and escalation policies are not separate
commercial fields.
The proposal's **Included** scope and the structured premium-support package are
separate terms. The customer view shows every included-scope line exactly as the
server-authored proposal records it, while it shows a named support package only
when the Offer carries one. A scope line must not be silently converted into a
support package, or vice versa. If its meaning is unclear, the issuer and
customer must resolve it in the audited Offer preview before acceptance; a Task
does not infer a support commitment from ambiguous wording.
Acceptance preserves these exact product and service terms in the acceptance record and
creates each contracted product right against that same record atomically.
Runtime-gated rights become usable only while the accepted terms and governing contract
are in force. The paid right to operate agents for clients is one such runtime right; sales-agent registration access,
registration, deterministic certification, and certification evidence are free and cannot
be sold in an entitlement bundle. Setup rights remain explicit fulfillment obligations;
acceptance does not silently assign a support owner or bypass payment standing for
chargeable operations.
Each plan also declares the default feature profile that presents those rights
as one coherent product experience. The profile is not a second plan or an
independent grant of access: Apostra validates that every entitlement the
profile requires is included and active. When you accept a plan, its
entitlements and default profile are provisioned together; if they are
incompatible, neither change is applied. An approved beta or operator-assisted
profile transition follows the same rule and cannot add a commercial right that
the organization does not already hold. Renewals preserve the accepted
profile revision with the successor term rather than silently adopting a later
profile definition.
## Rollover
On a committed plan, unused included IUs can carry into the next monthly period
up to 50% of that next period's included quantity:
* the 250 plan can carry at most 125 IUs; and
* the 1,000 plan can carry at most 500 IUs.
Carried IUs expire after that one successor period and cannot accumulate again.
Pay as you go provides no monthly allocation to roll over. Setup and
promotional credits never roll over.
## Enhanced Reporting
Connecting and mapping an account costs nothing. The catalog default for
**Enhanced Reporting** is **4 IUs per connected account per billing period**
after its account-level control is enabled and that exact account's existing
reporting subscription completes a successful sync. The control is set for one
exact connected account; it does not enable sibling accounts or change ordinary
connection and campaign features. An enabled account without a reporting
subscription or successful sync draws no IUs. Enhanced Reporting is a required
term on every new Rate Card, and every plan in the current template waives it.
Ordinary connection, synchronization, and campaign actions are included.
This is an activity term, not a buyer plan. The selected plan resolves the
catalog default before acceptance. For example, five eligible accounts would
have a 20-IU catalog total, but the current plans' waiver resolves that total to
zero.
The catalog keeps the 4-IU default visible, while the selected plan records the
waiver. **Usage & credits** applies the resolved terms from your accepted Rate
Card. A future customized Offer would have to show any different activity term
before acceptance. Charging is switched on per organization, never silently,
and accepting a plan does not itself start it—see [Billing cycle and fee
invoices](#billing-cycle-and-fee-invoices).
The 4-IU count is the current standard, not a final one. Your accepted version
is what applies to you: a change reaches you only through a successor Rate
Card that you accept, and it never reprices a period already metered.
## Complete activity schedule
Every Rate Card shows the same complete activity list. Each row starts with the
catalog unit and price. The selected plan then applies its activity terms, and a
Commercial Offer can apply an authorized customer-specific adjustment after
that. Either layer can set a custom IU price or waive the activity; an activity
without an override keeps the preceding value. Acceptance freezes the resolved
result, so later catalog, plan, or Offer changes cannot rewrite it.
The row status is part of the Rate Card. **Published** means an admitted meter
may debit the accepted IU balance. The v4 catalog contains exactly the three
published rows below. The accepted Rate Card freezes its catalog version and
resolved rows, so later catalog changes do not rewrite the agreement. Existing
accepted v0-v3 Rate Cards keep their earlier catalog and terms.
Historical agreements that predate the complete schedule retain only the
activity charges they explicitly contained. Showing the newer catalog does not
add a charge to one of those agreements; an activity absent from that immutable
snapshot stays absent until a successor Offer is accepted.
| Activity | Starting rate | Included boundary |
| - | -: | - |
| Brief response | 1 IU/response | One completed Apostra merchandising cycle |
| Enhanced Reporting | 4 IUs/account billing period | One exact connected account per billing period after its control is enabled and its existing reporting subscription completes a successful sync; ordinary connection, synchronization, and campaign actions are included |
| Apostra media buy | 1 IU/media buy billing period | One qualifying non-social Apostra media buy per billing period with positive impressions or spend |
Apostra media-buy qualification uses the latest authoritative delivery totals for
that buy and billing period. If a correction leaves both impressions and spend at zero
before invoicing, the provisional IU is removed. If the correction arrives after
invoicing, it is handled through the normal auditable one-IU credit or reversal process
against the original period. A later positive correction can reinstate the same unit
once, but cannot create an additional unit for that buy and period.
Customer approval actions, retries, routing, caching, and internal model calls
never create additional charges. Human expert support and Apostra-operated
modular-source fulfillment are contracted managed services, not metered IU
activities. Custom modular-source composition is included with Premium and
Enterprise through the Merchandising profile, not a per-source usage charge or
separate entitlement.
## New Seller Account setup credit
When an effective Rate Card makes the offer available, a seller billing
organization receives one **100-IU credit** on its first IU plan acceptance. You
do not need to be a new customer: if your organization has been with us for a
while and is accepting an IU plan for the first time, the credit is yours too.
The credit is valid for **60 days**, and it can be spent on **any IU-priced
activity** — it is not limited to setup work. The 60 days run from your signup
commit as a fixed window, not a number of billing periods, so it does not move
with your billing cycle. **Usage & credits shows the exact expiry date** rather
than asking you to derive it. Seller Account provisioning may complete
asynchronously without moving that window.
One credit per billing organization: later Seller Accounts do not create additional
credits. It does not roll over, has no cash value, and does not stack. A valid
promotion or referral code can attribute the same credit and may carry an
authorized pricing or access adjustment, but it cannot add a second credit or
change the program's value or expiration. The preview is recomputed after the
code is entered, and the adjusted Effective Rate Card—not the code itself—is the
accepted record.
The setup-credit offer is available only within the controlled staging pilot;
it is not currently available in production and does not create billable usage.
## Acceptance and renewal
When an effective Rate Card is available, **Settings → Plan & Billing** shows:
* the exact Rate Card version and effective date;
* every eligible plan size;
* your complete Effective Rate Card, including any corporate adjustment,
promotion, referral, or explicitly customized package;
* the exact entitlement-bundle revision, included feature keys, and premium-support
package when the offer carries them;
* a frozen customer proposal, when assigned, containing the scope, initial term,
renewal and notice terms, and the exact monthly and/or term-prepayment choices;
* included IUs, rollover, overage, billing timing, and term; and
* the governing agreement and renewal posture.
The online proposal and its downloadable PDF come from the same immutable Offer
snapshot. The PDF is labeled **Draft — not yet accepted** until the Offer has been
accepted. An accepted PDF records the canonical Offer version, acceptance date,
and selected payment choice; alternatives remain visible as not selected. If the
negotiated terms change, Apostra revokes or supersedes the Offer and issues a new
version; it does not edit the version you were sent.
The organization name on the proposal comes from the organization account, not
from a separate sales profile. If it is incorrect, Apostra updates the organization
record and issues a new Offer. Billing contacts, payer name, tax information, and
billing address likewise remain in the organization's Billing information.
When an Offer contains multiple payment choices, the administrator selects one
before accepting. The client submits only that option's key; Apostra resolves and
stores the complete frozen option as immutable acceptance evidence. A full-term
prepayment is one exact price in the Offer currency for the complete service
term; it is not a partial-term payment or a rounded number of monthly payments.
After
acceptance, **Set up payment** opens the organization's payment setup. Automated
term-prepayment collection is not yet self-service, so Apostra coordinates its
invoice or ACH funding separately and does not run monthly base charges for that
schedule.
After acceptance, invited staging organizations may also see the exact included
allocation, remaining balance, overage rate, rollover policy, observed usage,
and projected month-end usage on **Usage & credits**. These staging figures do
not create charges or enforce entitlements.
Only a verified organization administrator can accept a plan. An agent, API
credential, service account, or impersonated support session cannot make that
financial commitment. If the offer changes while you are reviewing it, the
confirmation reloads and asks you to review the new version.
Signup may present the current Terms of Service and IU Rate Card in one flow,
but the acceptances remain distinct: the record preserves the exact agreement,
Rate Card version, selected plan, complete adjustments, prices, actor, and time.
An existing organization without an accepted plan will receive the same **Choose an
IU plan** action after a Rate Card becomes effective. Apostra never silently
accepts a paid plan on its behalf.
The plan task also lets an administrator **Continue without a paid plan** or
**Decide later**. Continuing without a plan dismisses automatic login prompts
for only the exact Rate Card revision reviewed; a successor revision may be
shown again. Deciding later allows Apostra to show the task on the next
login. In either case, **Settings → Plan & Billing** keeps the manual **Choose an
IU plan** action available while the offer remains current, so you can return
without waiting for another prompt.
One acceptance applies to the billing organization. If you accepted from a
Seller Account task, the buyer view shows the same plan; if you accepted from a
buyer task, the Seller Account view does too.
Standard plans and private offers marked **pin exact** renew through immutable
monthly terms at the accepted price. An offer marked **review required** stops
before automatic renewal and requires a new explicit commercial decision. A
later Rate Card or adjustment never silently reprices the current term. Ending
the IU plan at term is an organization-wide decision: it prevents the next
shared plan term from starting, rather than ending only one buyer or Seller Account
capability. Individual capabilities are enabled or disabled separately.
## Billing cycle and fee invoices
Once charging is enabled for your organization (it is switched on per
organization, never silently — accepting a plan does not itself start
charging), your IU plan bills on the **calendar month**:
* **Commitment at cycle start.** The plan's monthly commitment is charged at
the start of each calendar month, at the price fixed in your accepted
terms.
* **Overage during the cycle.** Usage beyond your included and rolled-over
IUs accrues as overage at your plan's per-IU rate. For organizations paying
by card, accrued overage is charged automatically once it crosses a
threshold, so month-end never brings one large surprise; any remainder
settles when the cycle closes.
* **A fee invoice at cycle close.** Every charged month produces a numbered
fee invoice — plan commitment, overage (IUs × rate), and payments applied —
on **Settings → Plan & Billing → Payment & invoices**. Invoice numbers are
sequential with no gaps, and an issued invoice's charges never change;
payments are appended as they settle.
Commitment billing and usage billing are switched on separately. Your
organization can have commitment billing on while usage billing is still off;
the reverse cannot happen. While usage billing is off, overage still accrues
and stays visible on **Usage & credits**, but it is not charged and no overage
line appears on your fee invoice — so a month in which you used more than your
included and rolled-over IUs can still invoice as the commitment alone. Overage
that a closed month did not bill is not collected later: issued invoices never
change. If usage billing is switched on during a period, overage already
accrued in that same open period becomes chargeable.
Organizations paying by card are charged automatically against the saved
card. Invoiced organizations receive the fee invoice only and pay on their
existing terms — no card charge is made.
If a card charge fails, the standard payment recovery ladder applies: retries
on a published schedule, email notices, and a self-serve **pay now** action on
Plan & Billing that clears the failed-payment status once it succeeds. Plan &
Billing also reports unresolved dunning-backed holds, while reaching the
account's cap records an internal hold. In the current alpha, neither hold is
consulted by a production authorization path, so it does not automatically
block new paid platform activity. Viewing, reporting, exporting, and fixing
your payment method remain available.
## For agents and API clients
`GET /api/v2/billing/iu-rate-card` is the canonical organization offer read.
`GET /api/v2/billing/fee-invoices` lists the organization's fee invoices, and
`GET /api/v2/billing/fee-invoices/{invoiceNumber}` returns one invoice with
its line items.
Agents should use the typed `open_iu_plan_task` tool to open the same portable
plan-selection task rather than reconstructing it from a generic API call. Its
model-visible receipt is deliberately bounded; the authenticated app receives
the exact commercial state. `get_iu_rate_card_offer` remains available only as
a compatibility read for deployed clients.
Acceptance and renewal changes are direct human commitments. The task invokes
app-only operations to append the displayed, declined, deferred, or accepted
outcome and to schedule or reinstate renewal. Every response is idempotent and
tied to the exact Rate Card revision; an accepted outcome links to the immutable
acceptance record. These commit operations are not model-visible. The older
`storefront-rate-card` REST paths and storefront-named tools remain deprecated
compatibility aliases; new clients should use the organization IU names.
## Separate from media pricing
IUs price platform activity. Existing media-pricing arrangements cover media
spend and their accepted contract fee terms. This Organization IU Rate Card
does not replace, amend, or silently remove those terms. Plan & Billing can show
both because an organization may owe both platform/IU charges and media charges,
but each is a separate commercial stream.
## Related
Where organization administrators review commercial terms
Payouts, settlement, and the Seller Account view of the shared plan
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