Billing, Cycles & Credits
Every plan is paid from a billing account. Its balance is your Ghayma wallet: you top it up, and plan fees, renewals, upgrades and domain purchases are taken from it. This page explains monthly and yearly billing, and what happens to your money when you switch cycle, change plan or delete a project.
Credit, never a refund
Ghayma never pays money back to a card or a payment method. When you are owed money, it goes back to the billing account’s balance as credit.
- Credit pays the next charges on that billing account automatically — monthly fees, renewals, upgrades, domains.
- Credit cannot be withdrawn or paid out.
- Deleting your Ghayma account forfeits any credit left on the billing accounts you own. The Dashboard shows the amount and asks you to confirm first (Delete Account in the API).
At a glance
| What you do | What happens to your money |
|---|---|
| Upgrade to a dearer plan | Applies now. You pay the price difference for the days left in your current month or year |
| Downgrade to a cheaper plan | Applies at the end of the period you’ve paid for. Nothing is credited |
| Switch monthly → yearly | You pay the yearly price, minus the unused days of this month if this month was already paid. Your year starts today |
| Switch yearly → monthly | You get credit for the unused part of your year (how it’s worked out). Monthly billing starts on the 1st of next month |
| Delete a project billed yearly | The same credit goes back to the billing account that paid for the year |
| Delete a project billed monthly | The current month is not credited |
| A domain registration fails | The full price is credited back |
You can switch a project between monthly and yearly at most once every 7 days.
Monthly and yearly billing
- Monthly — the project is charged its plan’s monthly price on the 1st of every month. A project created mid-month pays only for the days left in that first month.
- Yearly — one charge covers twelve months from the day the year starts, then the year renews. The yearly price is cheaper than twelve monthly fees: Hobby costs 1,000 DZD a month or 10,000 DZD a year, two months free.
The examples on this page use the Hobby plan’s prices on 2026-09-30. The Dashboard’s Billing page always shows the current prices.
Leaving a yearly plan early
When you switch a yearly project to monthly, or delete it, you get back the part of the year you haven’t used, as credit:
credit = paid for the current year − the same time at the monthly price- The current month counts in full. It is already yours: after a switch, monthly billing starts on the 1st of next month.
- The credit is never negative. Once the months you’ve used cost as much as the year, the credit is 0 — you never pay anything extra.
Used months count at the monthly price because the yearly discount is the reward for staying the whole year: leaving early costs exactly what monthly billing would have cost for the same time, no more.
Examples — Hobby, paid 10,000 DZD for a year that started on the 1st:
| You leave during | Used, at 1,000 DZD a month | Credit |
|---|---|---|
| Month 1 | 1,000 DZD | 9,000 DZD |
| Month 6 | 6,000 DZD | 4,000 DZD |
| Month 10, 11 or 12 | 10,000 DZD or more | 0 |
Two details:
- Upgraded during the year? What you paid includes the upgrade charge, and each month counts at the monthly price of the plan you had in that month.
- Year started mid-month? That first month counts only for the days left in it, exactly as a monthly project’s first month would.
The Dashboard shows the exact credit before you confirm a switch or a delete. The API returns the same number from Yearly Credit Quote.
Credit from a deleted project stays on the billing account that paid for it. If you then delete your Ghayma account, that credit is forfeited with the rest of the balance — spend it on another project first.
Switching monthly to yearly
You pay the yearly price, minus the unused days of the current month — you had already paid for them on the monthly plan. On the 21st of a 30-day month, the 10 days left (today included) are worth 1,000 × 10/30 ≈ 333 DZD, so moving Hobby to yearly costs about 10,000 − 333 = 9,667 DZD. The year starts that day and renews a year later.
Changing plan
- Upgrade — immediate. You pay the price difference for the days left in your current month or year; the Dashboard shows the amount before you confirm.
- Downgrade — scheduled for the end of the period you’ve paid for. You keep your current plan and its points budget until then, and nothing is credited. If your footprint is bigger than the new plan’s budget, see Over-budget states.
Domain registrations
A domain purchase is paid from your billing account. If the registration fails, the full price is credited back to that billing account.
In the API
- Change Plan — upgrades, downgrades and the plan quote.
- Change Billing Cycle — monthly ↔ yearly.
- Yearly Credit Quote — the credit before you switch or delete.
- Delete Project — returns the amount credited.
- Delete Account — confirming the forfeit.