Overage
A charge for going beyond what a plan includes, such as extra storage, API calls or seats, applied on top of the subscription you already pay for.
Also known as: Usage overage, Excess usage
An overage is what you pay for going past an included allowance: storage above the bundled quota, API calls above the monthly limit, seats above the committed count. It sits on top of the subscription price rather than replacing it, so a tool with a low headline cost and a tight allowance can invoice considerably more than the plan it appears to be on.
Three things can happen at the boundary, and only one of them is a surprise: an automatic move up to the next tier, a per-unit charge for the excess, or a hard stop until the next period. The per-unit charge is the one that shows up later as an unexplained variance, because nothing in the register says the cost is variable. Recording the allowance beside the price, and the overage rate beside that, is what makes the line forecastable.
Related terms
- Seat (per-seat licensing)A single user's licence to a piece of software. Per-seat pricing charges by the number of seats you buy, not by usage.
- True-upA reconciliation that bills you for what you actually deployed or used above what you licensed, usually settled once a year rather than at the point of use.
- SaaS (Software as a Service)Software delivered over the internet on a subscription, rather than installed and owned outright, usually billed per seat.