How to interpret the 1500 Fv2 Hours in the pricing plans

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Georg Laage asked May 7, '20

How to interpret the 1500 Fv2 Hours in the pricing plans

When i signed up for playfab i thought that all plans included 1500 free hours and after those are used up the pricing per server kicks in. Apparently i was wrong here and the free plan only contains 100 server hours which i quickly used up with a standby server. (discussion can be found here) Is there a way to actually see this written somewhere? Some moderate time of research did not bring up this limit of 100 hours to me.
(Reference: Playfab Pricing site)

If those 1500 hours are not free hours then i do not understand what kind of limit this number is supposed to represent. Especially since it specifies "Fv2" which would indicate a certain type of server which is not selectable for me when creating a new build.

Thx for any insight on this matter.

limits pricing

10 |1200

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Answer 1 · 2020-05-07T01:36:12Z

brendan answered May 7, '20

Yes, it's in our documentation, here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/gaming/playfab/features/multiplayer/servers/billing-for-thunderhead.

The pricing page clearly needs to be updated to provide more details, so we have a bug open on this. The 1500 is referring to the fact that you currently get 750 free Fv2 hours in US and Europe (see the billing details page above for more info).

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10 |1200

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brendan commented · May 07, 2020 at 10:20 PM

Ah! And I just realized you're talking about the Billing Summary page, given that you haven't actually received any invoices for this (April usage invoices will go out next week). Yes, there's a bug on the Billing Summary page, such that it isn't computing the Fv2 costs correctly (it's not taking into consideration the free hours). We're fixing that now, but rest assured that it won't be on your invoice.

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Georg Laage brendan commented · May 09, 2020 at 10:15 AM

Thx for the info but... that would require me to even find the billing information. Can you give me a hint regarding on where to actually find my billing information?
Because if i follow the instructions given on your website here there is just no option that leads me to any billing information. It only gives me "New Title", "Roles", "Users" and "Studio Settings".
Is that feature not available for the free tier?
The only billing related info i can find is a site where i can change the billing address and the credit card information. This does however not show any information regarding my current bill for this credit card...

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brendan Georg Laage commented · May 11, 2020 at 07:59 PM

Sure thing - click on the PlayFab logo in the upper left corner to get to the main dashboard where all your studios show up. For the studio in question, click on the ellipsis ("...") on the right, and select Billing Summary. Again, this is only being computed for titles in the newer pricing model right now, but we'll be making an option available to others as soon as we can.

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Georg Laage commented · May 11, 2020 at 08:16 PM

well okay thx for clearing this up. that at least confirms that i was searching at the correct position. Pic attached. Does that mean there is no bill? does that mean i don't use the new pricing model? is there some way to see which pricing model i'd be billed on?

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Georg Laage Georg Laage commented · May 11, 2020 at 08:18 PM

sorry for posting this not at the correct comment position. typed in the wrong window and it wont let me move/delete/edit the comment now.

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brendan Georg Laage commented · May 11, 2020 at 10:27 PM

Can you try this link? I can see your billing summary, but most of your usage is too low for the meters to have any meaningful information, so those aren't showing up on the page at all.

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brendan brendan commented · May 11, 2020 at 11:18 PM

Ah! Wait - you have no titles that are Live. Since the billing summary page is specifically for billing, no Development Mode title will show up there, apart from any server hosting, CDN, or Party use for which you're over the free limit. The core services (Profile Read/Write, etc.) aren't charged, so they can't show up in billing for those titles. We'll have a page available where you can see meter use for v2 pricing Dev Mode titles (as well as v1 pricing titles) shortly - the code is in test now.

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sickshark commented · May 13, 2020 at 10:11 PM

@Brendan I do not understand this multiplayer price. The doc says "PlayFab Multiplayer Servers is billed on a consumption basis." Then what does it mean?? 99$ +servers?matchmaking?memory?traffic? Could you tel me what is the minimum cost of the most little istance per month? I would like to understand at what cost comes this solution.

-I read somewhere you use EC2 istance +10% of costs? what does it mean? do you host on Amazon o Azure?

-Do you have the possibility to use VPS in order to have better prices?

-if one uses only Playfab authentication with its own server hosted somewhere, after 10000 clients logged we must pay 99$ ?

Thank you!

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brendan sickshark commented · May 14, 2020 at 12:15 AM

The new pricing model's standard tier is $99 a month. That includes use on each of the meters as detailed on the pricing page. Beyond that usage, the meters are charged at the rates shown.

For our v2 game server hosting, we charge the rates shown on the detailed pricing page (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/gaming/playfab/features/multiplayer/servers/multiplayer-servers-detailed-price-sheet) based on which server model(s) you're using (CPU cost plus total egress cost). The legacy server hosting is in EC2, and it's charged at the EC2 cost (again, CPU+egress) plus 10% to cover our costs. In the legacy service, it's specifically the On-Demand Windows server pricing for the regions you're running. Those are the only supported pricing models, currently.

Titles in Development Mode are limited in terms of the total number of player accounts they can have (though you can delete player accounts to clear space for other accounts). That total was 10K player accounts, but we've updated that to 100K.

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sickshark brendan commented · May 14, 2020 at 10:14 AM

By legacy you mean that now we can instead have server hosted on VM like Fv2 ?

When you state free tier "1500 Fv2 Hours"
you mean per month(you should put a little hover info,saving forum help)? instead if I select EC2 instance I will be charged more than azure? then why people would prefer that EC2 instance over azure? is hard configuration?

what happen if I am in the free tier and go over 1500F2 hours per month? I will be charged according to that price-sheet?

you have updated to 100000 overnight XD ?a bit scary this fluctuation but at least is for better. 10000 were really nothing.

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sickshark commented · May 14, 2020 at 01:56 AM

@Brendan

Finally, what does it mean 99$ + then pay as you go?? you are force for some months or what?

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brendan sickshark commented · May 14, 2020 at 02:41 AM

Specifically, what the pricing page is saying is that the Standard tier has a base fee of $99 a month. For that, you get everything listed for that tier, including a certain amount of included meter units. Any usage beyond those included meter units would be charged at the listed rates. For example, with Cloud Script you get 400,000 gigabyte secons (GB-s) of execution time, and the charge is $0.00002 per additional GB-s beyond that. For server hosting, use past our free hours would be charged at the rate for the specific server model you choose when you set up your build (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/gaming/playfab/features/multiplayer/servers/multiplayer-servers-detailed-price-sheet).

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