Billing: platform balance and Pro
The final lesson: how CreateYourVPN billing works — balance and daily per-client charges, top-ups via Telegram, what happens when the balance runs out, and the Pro subscription.
The final lesson covers the Billing section: how you settle with the platform itself. The model is simple: a wallet balance charged once a day for your clients, plus a Pro subscription for those who earn on their VPN.
What the platform costs
There's no "per server" fee — you pay per client, and the first client is always free. The "Billing plan" card offers two options:
| Plan | Price | Who you pay for |
|---|---|---|
| "Per client in base" | €0.10 per month | Every client in your base |
| "Per active client" | €0.20 per month | Only clients who connected in the last 24 hours |
The charge happens once a day — 1/30 of the monthly rate for each billable client. The balance card always shows the "Estimated daily charge" and the "Balance lasts until …" forecast.
Which plan is cheaper depends on your audience: lots of "sleeping" clients — take "Per active"; everyone connects daily — "Per client in base". You can switch anytime; the change takes effect the next day.
Top-ups — via Telegram
Top-ups come as tiles with fixed amounts from €5 to €100. Payment goes through Tribute in Telegram, so you need to link your Telegram username once in the account settings: the payment is credited to your balance by that username. Money arrives automatically within a minute or two.
Paid before linking the username? Nothing is lost: as soon as you save the username in settings, the "lost" top-ups credit themselves.
Every money movement is visible in the "History" card: top-ups, daily charges, adjustments, and refunds.
If the money runs out
The system warns you in advance and switches things off only at the very end:
- About 7 days before zero — a reminder email.
- A day before — another one.
- The balance goes negative — your clients' VPN stops and you get an email. The panel keeps working: balance, history, and the top-up button are all there, but you can't create or enable clients until you top up.
- Topped up — within a few minutes everything comes back on its own: the system re-enables exactly the clients it stopped (the ones you disabled manually are left alone) and sends a "VPN is back up" email.
The Pro and Max subscriptions
There are two subscriptions, and both are charged from the same balance, separately from the per-client fee. The difference is simple: Pro unlocks the day-to-day extras — emergency access, backups, master swap; Max unlocks everything that turns a VPN into a business — and includes all of Pro.
Pro — €0.99 per month (monthly only). It gives three things:
- Emergency access (OLCRTC) — a backup channel disguised as a video call, for networks with allow-lists (bonus lesson).
- Backups of your user base (lesson 8).
- Master swap — moving the cluster master to another node without rebuilding anything (lesson 2).
Max — €4.99 per month. Everything in Pro, plus:
- The landing page and your own domains — a full home page for your service, plus your own domain on any storefront address (lesson 10).
- Selling — plans and payment acceptance (lesson 11 and lesson 12).
Renewal is automatic, from the same balance. You can cancel anytime — Pro serves out the paid period and switches off. Pro won't drag you into the red: if there isn't enough for a renewal, the subscription simply doesn't renew.
The first 3 days are free. Whichever plan you pick first starts as a 3-day trial: no card, no prepayment, every feature on. When it ends, the plan is charged from your balance and the subscription simply continues. If there isn't enough, the subscription ends — and if your balance is empty, a symbolic €0.01 takes it into the red, which stops the service until you top up (renewing a paid subscription never does this: it just doesn't renew). Cancel at any point during the trial and access lasts to the end of the third day with nothing charged. The trial is given once per account, and the daily per-client fee runs as usual throughout.
Remember
- You pay per client: €0.10/mo for each in the base or €0.20/mo per active one; the first is free; charged once a day.
- Top-ups are €5–100 via Telegram; link your username in settings — payments are credited by it.
- Warnings ~7 days and 1 day ahead; in the red the VPN stops and comes back by itself after a top-up.
- Pro (€0.99/mo) = emergency access, backups and master swap; Max (€4.99/mo) = everything in Pro + the paid storefront and selling; cancelling lets it serve out the paid period.
- Your first plan starts as a free 3-day trial (once per account); at the end it's charged from your balance, and if there's nothing there the subscription ends and the service stops until you top up.
Course complete 🎉
You now know the system end to end — from hardware to money.
Infrastructure:
- Terminology — cluster, server, route, inbound.
- Clusters — the master, the nodes, and the swap.
- Servers — installation and metrics.
- Routes — what the user sees and how balancing works.
- Inbounds — masquerading, blocking, split tunneling.
- Multihop — server chains.
- Monitoring — self-checks, the mesh network, and self-healing.
- Backups — your user base, safe and sound.
Clients and money:
- Users — statuses, subscription links, manual management.
- Customization — the storefront under your brand.
- Plans — what you sell and for how much.
- Monetization — payments that become subscriptions on their own.
- Billing — the balance, platform pricing, and Pro.
What's next? If you haven't connected your first server yet, start with the setup guide. For app-specific questions, see the guides for Happ and the OpenWRT and Keenetic routers. And the course is always at hand as a reference: forgot a term — open the lesson.