Pro, Startup or Scale: the monthly usage where each Sume plan wins

Sume Pro is cheapest up to $120 of monthly usage, Startup is cheapest from $120 to $420, and Scale is cheapest above $420. Those thresholds follow from the fee and included usage in the plan catalog: your bill is the larger of the plan fee and the fee plus whatever usage exceeds the allowance. Included usage figures come from Sume's plan catalog; the Billing and subscription page in the dashboard shows how much included usage is left on your workspace.

The formula

Let S be the usage you would be billed at Sume's rates in a month. Then the monthly cost is:

• Pro: the larger of $40 and S (the $40 fee covers the first $40, so overage is S minus $40 on top of $40).
• Startup: the larger of $120 and S minus $20 ($120 fee, $140 allowance).
• Scale: the larger of $400 and S minus $400 ($400 fee, $800 allowance).

The table

Same spend, three plans. The last column is the cheapest.

What the table leaves out

Price is not the only reason to move up. Pro runs 4 generations at once and accepts 24 jobs (4 running plus 20 queued); Startup runs 8 and accepts 48; Scale runs 20 and accepts 120. A weekly batch that does not fit the accepted count gets a 429 queue_full for the rest, so a team with bursty work may need Startup at $80 of usage.

Going the other way, Scale at $400 is a poor deal if you spend $250: you pay $400 where Startup would be $230. Check last month's usage before you upgrade, and note that upgrades take effect immediately while downgrades wait for the period end. See how yearly billing changes the fee if you can commit for a year.

Two of the table rows deserve a note. At $120 of usage Pro and Startup tie at $120, so the extra concurrency on Startup is free at that point. At $420, Startup is $400 and Scale is $400, so Scale is a tie there and wins only above it. If your usage swings from month to month, the plan that is cheapest on average may not be the cheapest in a peak month, and downgrades only apply at period end, so a short spike is better handled with a top-up than a plan change.