Commercial license billing and hour quota

Commercial Chrovia Licenses authorize browser capabilities for Chrovia SDK deployments. This guide covers licenses purchased in Chrovia Console, not Persona Hub Pro or other product subscriptions.

Purchase a commercial license

1. Sign in to Chrovia Console, open Create license, and select Commercial under License type.
2. Select the Operating systems and Capabilities to authorize.
3. Set Validity (days) and Monthly hour quota. Validity accepts whole days from 1 to 3,650; quota must be a positive whole number.
4. Review Order summary and Estimated price, then click Purchase license and complete checkout.
5. After payment is confirmed and the license is issued, open Licenses and download it. Follow the License installation guide for browser download, file placement, and verification; the installation steps also apply to commercial licenses.

This is a one-time purchase, not an automatically renewing subscription. The validity period starts when the license is issued after payment confirmation, not when you first launch the browser. Leaving the browser closed does not pause the expiration date.

How the purchase price is calculated

Pricing is in USD. The hourly rate is the sum of the base rate, each selected operating system, and each selected capability:

Capability rates apply per selected capability, not once per tier. All selected items contribute to the purchase price, even if you do not use them during a particular session.

Billing months = validity days ÷ 30, rounded up
Pricing hours = monthly hour quota × billing months
Purchase price = pricing hours × combined hourly rate

The price is rounded to the nearest US cent. The minimum purchase amount is $5.00: a configuration below that amount cannot proceed to checkout; it is not automatically raised to $5. Review the final amount shown at checkout before paying.

For example, select 60 days, 2,000 hours per month, two operating systems, one Basic capability, one Advanced capability, and one Flagship capability:

Hourly rate = 0.001 + (2 × 0.0005) + 0.00001 + 0.0002 + 0.0005
            = $0.00271
Billing months = 60 ÷ 30 = 2
Pricing hours = 2,000 × 2 = 4,000
Purchase price = 4,000 × $0.00271 = $10.84

1–30 days count as one billing month; 31–60 days count as two. This rounding affects the price only: a 31-day license still expires after 31 days, not 60.

When monthly quota resets

The monthly hour quota belongs to one license, shared by all browser instances using that license. It is not a separate allowance for each computer, operating system, or capability.

Usage is counted by UTC calendar month and resets at 00:00 UTC on the first day of each month. Unused quota does not carry over. The first and last partial calendar months use the same monthly limit; it is not prorated by days remaining.

For example, a license issued on September 20 has one quota counter for September. On October 1 at 00:00 UTC, usage starts at zero for October, provided the license is still valid. The reset does not extend the license's expiration date.

Billing months and quota months are different. Billing months are 30-day blocks rounded up for pricing; quota follows calendar months. The order summary's Total hours is a pricing calculation, not a single balance you can spend freely across the entire validity period.

How hours are consumed

A browser instance obtains a short-lived online authorization called a lease. Each time the server issues a lease, it immediately consumes 1 hour of that license's current monthly quota. A lease lasts up to 60 minutes and cannot extend beyond the license's expiration.

This is lease-based accounting, not a stopwatch:

• Short sessions: receiving a lease and quitting after five minutes still consumes 1 hour. Unused lease time is not returned.
• Full restarts: a new browser process requests its own lease; it does not reuse the previous process's remaining lease time.
• Multiple instances: independently launched browser instances each obtain leases and consume the same license's quota. Ten instances receiving one lease each consume 10 hours.
• Tabs and windows: opening another tab or window within the same running browser instance does not itself create a separate lease charge. An independently launched instance does.
• Idle browsers: an open browser still renews authorization even when no one is actively using a capability. Fully quit the browser to stop further renewals.
• Retries: consumption happens when the server issues the lease, not when the browser receives or applies it. A lost response followed by another successful claim can consume another hour; rejected claims do not grant a lease or consume an hour.

Renewal happens before the hour ends

The bundled Chrovia Infra extension currently checks for renewal every 50 minutes, requesting a fresh lease before the previous one expires. Each newly issued lease consumes another hour; overlapping validity is not credited back.

For example, with successful startup and scheduled renewals, one continuously running instance receives leases at roughly minute 0, 50, and 100. By minute 100, it has consumed 3 quota hours, not two. Alarm timing, sleep, and network retries can change the actual timing. Do not budget on the assumption that one quota hour always equals 60 minutes of browser uptime.

Check usage and handle an exhausted quota

Open Licenses in Console. Each card shows the current month's used, remaining, and total hours, along with the license's expiration date and status.

When the quota is exhausted, the server rejects new lease requests. It does not automatically bill for extra hours. The bundled browser treats a quota rejection as an authorization failure and displays the license lock prompt; an existing lease is not a guarantee that the browser will continue until its original expiry after a renewal is rejected.

If the license is still valid, quota becomes available again at the next UTC month boundary. After that reset, fully quit and relaunch a browser that was locked by a quota rejection. A monthly reset cannot restore an expired or revoked license.

For the lease-based licenses described above, online access to Chrovia Console is required to obtain and renew leases. A network outage does not turn a lease-based license into an offline license: if authorization cannot be renewed, the browser eventually locks. Check connectivity, the license status, and remaining quota when renewal fails.

Offline commercial licenses (noLease)

Chrovia also offers offline commercial licenses with noLease authorization for special deployments, such as intranet environments and web crawlers. These licenses do not require online verification or lease renewal, so they do not consume the hourly lease quota described above. The browser still validates the signed License locally and enforces its authorized capabilities and validity period.

Offline licenses are arranged separately, rather than through the standard hourly-quota purchase flow in Console. To apply, email Support at support@getchrovia.com with your intended use case, deployment environment, operating systems, and required capabilities. Support can discuss pricing and licensing terms for your deployment.