What each deployment outcome costs
Quotes, reserves, and final charges explains the money lifecycle. This page answers the question that follows it: for each way a deployment can end, what happens to the money?
It covers deployment settlement only. Account-level charges are separate and do not appear here.
Customer Stripe checkout and new Service Credit issuance are release-gated. See Read USD Service Credits.
What the network actually consumes
Liskov commits a bounded Acurast reward for your deployment, within the effective policy, and reserves the matching Service Credits.
The network consumes that reward per accepted execution report, at an amount fixed when the job is assigned. A job that produces fewer accepted reports consumes less. Success and failure reports take the same fee path, so how a run ended does not by itself decide the amount — the number of accepted executions does.
When the job ends, Liskov ends the registration, reads the settlement evidence, and debits a final charge in USD Service Credits at the rate fixed when the work was authorized. Unused reserve is released.
A reserve is the maximum the deployment can cost. It is not a forecast, and the final charge is determined at settlement rather than predicted.
What each outcome costs
| What happened | Final charge | Reserve |
|---|---|---|
| No reserve was taken — insufficient credit, a policy cap, or a stale quote | None | Never taken |
| Nothing was ever broadcast to the network | None | Released in full |
| The network refused the registration | None | Released in full |
| The job ran and ended, and settlement evidence is complete | From evidence, up to the reserve | Remainder released |
| Managed custody: the strict report deadline passed and the finalized scanner proves no report was filed | Zero — not billed | Released in full |
| The registration ended and returned nothing | Up to the reserve, never more | Nothing to release |
| The registration ended and returned everything | Zero | Released in full |
| Settlement evidence is pending, unreadable, or outside coverage | None yet — settlement is deferred | Stays open |
| Required evidence is missing or contradictory | None yet — the item enters review | Stays open until resolved |
| The job is still running, or the schedule has not ended | None yet | Stays open |
Two of these look alike and are not. A registration that ended and returned nothing has a chain coordinate and a zero refund. A registration where no deregistration was submitted has neither, and missing chain evidence must never be read as a zero return — that case is deferred or reviewed, not charged.
The managed no-report row is also distinct. It is authorized only after the
strict deadline by a finalized, readable scanner result. It closes with
report_absent_not_billed, no unresolved amount, and no customer action. An
open deadline or unreadable, unavailable, outside-coverage, conflicting, or
failed scan stays deferred. Self-custody does not use this Service Credit rule;
its ACU movement remains immutable chain accounting, not a refund or reversal.
Pausing, retiring, and renewing
Pause and retirement stop new Liskov work but cannot end a job the chain already owns. An existing job runs to its scheduled end and settles normally, so a reserve can stay open after you pause. Retirement completes only once every reserve, charge, release, and review has closed — see Billing, settlement, and retirement.
A renewal or a replacement is new work with its own reserve, which can open while the previous one is still settling.
What never appears as a separate charge
- Attempts the network refused, and repricing while Liskov looks for a processor, within the try bound your policy allows.
- Liskov's own native chain transaction fees and treasury movements. These are platform costs recovered through your plan, not a separate line on your bill, and you never hold or spend network assets yourself.
- Any amount above the reserve for that deployment.
When an amount is under review
Liskov fails closed. If the evidence needed to decide a final amount is missing or contradictory, the item is neither charged nor released.
While an item is in review you should be able to see, together: the reserved amount, the exact amount charged so far — often zero, the unresolved amount, and that this is a Liskov review needing no action from you. Your available credit stays reduced by the reserve until it resolves.
Report status and financial state are independent: evidence can arrive and the financial item still resolve separately.
Check what you were actually charged
Open Billing & funding, or read the authoritative records. Final charges draw against promotional credit first, where the organization has it.
proof liskov organization billing transactions ORGANIZATION_ID \
--limit 25
Match each reserve, final charge, and release to the Application UID and deployment. Never infer a charge by subtracting two displayed balances.
Related
- Quotes, reserves, and final charges — the money lifecycle.
- Read USD Service Credits — balances, history, and promotional credit.
- Spend limits — the caps you author.
- Costs and custody model — why you hold no network assets.