Everything you need to know about why was i charged for an extra rock?.

Why Was I Charged for an Extra Rock?

If you noticed a charge on your invoice for a rock you do not recognize, this article walks through the most common causes and how to verify each one.

Where to investigate first

Open Settings → Billing → Invoices and click into the invoice in question. Each line item links to the rock it was billed for. The link will take you directly to that rock's detail page, even if the rock has since been archived.

If the rock is archived, the detail page will display the archive timestamp and the user who initiated the archive.

Common cause 1: Autoscaling

If you have autoscaling enabled, PetRock.cloud may provision additional rocks when configured load thresholds are met. Since rocks do not respond to load, the load thresholds you configured will never be exceeded by rock activity itself, but they may be triggered by:

  • Dashboard view counts above the configured limit
  • API token introspection rate exceeding the threshold
  • Scheduled scale-up policies (e.g., "always have 3 rocks during business hours")

Review your autoscaling policy at Settings → Autoscaling.

Common cause 2: Tier overages

On the Pebble and Cobble tiers, provisioning rocks beyond your included quota triggers overage billing at $4.99 per rock per month, prorated. Overage rocks appear on your invoice with the label Overage: Additional Rock.

To prevent overages, set a hard quota limit:

  1. Go to Settings → Billing → Quota Controls.
  2. Toggle Hard Quota Enforcement on.
  3. With this enabled, attempts to provision beyond your tier limit will return a 402 Payment Required error rather than billing as overage.

Common cause 3: Test rocks left running in production

Sandbox rocks are free. Production rocks are not. A common cause of unexpected charges is provisioning a test rock in the production environment by mistake.

Check the environment indicator at the top of each rock's detail page. If a rock you intended to be a test was provisioned in Production, archive it and contact support to request a credit if it was provisioned within the last 14 days.

Common cause 4: API-driven provisioning

If you have API tokens with write scope distributed across CI systems or third-party integrations, those systems may provision rocks. Check the audit log:

  1. Navigate to Audit Log.
  2. Filter by Action: rock.provisioned.
  3. The actor column shows which token or user triggered provisioning.

Note: Rotate any token you suspect has been used unintentionally. See OAuth 2.0 for Rocks for token management.

Requesting a refund

If after investigating you believe the charge is in error, contact billing support at billing@petrock.cloud with the invoice number. Refund eligibility is reviewed on a case-by-case basis.