Plans & billing
Lume offers several plans, and what each one includes differs — pick the one that matches how much AI work you actually do. Everything below describes Lume specifically: our prices, our allowances, our payment methods. Numbers on this page are the ones the billing service enforces.
Where Lume is available
Lume is sold in US dollars (USD) and there is no country restriction on purchases — checkout works from anywhere a card issuer permits payments to a Stripe merchant. What varies by country is tax, not availability: your billing country decides the tax rate, and business customers can enter a tax identifier at checkout.
There are no local payment methods (BLIK, Przelewy24, Alipay, PayPal). See Payment methods for exactly what we accept and why.
Glossary
It is worth pinning down these terms before reading the plan table, because they are spent in this order.
| Term | Description |
|---|---|
| Balance | The core billing concept in Lume: real US dollars held on your account, and the unit every AI request is finally deducted from. Token costs are converted to USD and taken off the balance. |
| Basic usage | The allowance your plan puts on the account each month. Available immediately. Unused Basic does not carry over to the next month. |
| Usage package | A one-time purchase that adds balance without a subscription ($10, $25 or $50). Valid for 12 months, and it unlocks AI chat and the agent on its own. Whichever balance expires soonest is always spent first. |
| On-Demand usage | Pay-as-you-go, no preset cap. Once your balance is exhausted, cost keeps accruing at actual token consumption and is charged to your saved card every $3 accumulated. Turning the toggle off, or the end of your billing period, also settles whatever is on the meter. If a charge fails, AI access pauses until payment goes through (automatic retries, or retry manually from the cabinet). |
Plans
Lume offers five plans: Free, Lite, Pro, Pro+ and Ultra.
| Free | Lite | Pro | Pro+ | Ultra | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Recurring monthly price | $0 | $3 | $10 | $30 | $100 |
| Single month price Will not auto-renew after expiration | — | $4.5 | $15 | $45 | $150 |
| Annual price | — | $27 (average $2.25/month) | $90 (average $7.5/month) | $270 (average $22.5/month) | $900 (average $75/month) |
| Basic usage/month | ❌ | $5 | $20 | $90 | $400 |
| On-Demand usage | ❌ | Billed by token | Billed by token | Billed by token | Billed by token |
| AI chat and agent | ❌ Needs paid balance | Billed by token | Billed by token | Billed by token | Billed by token |
| Autocompletion (CUE) | 2,000/month | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| SOLO mode | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Queue priority | Blocked without balance | By balance | By balance | By balance | By balance |
Note: Free has no AI allowance at all. The editor, extensions, Git, remote development and code completion are the free product; AI chat and the agent stay locked until there is paid balance on the account. There is no free trial. This is a deliberate difference from editors that hand out a monthly AI allowance — we would rather charge for inference than meter it into uselessness.
SOLO mode is not gated by plan. Every plan can open it, including Free. It is the agent working in a task-first layout, so it spends balance like any other agent work — on Free, with no balance, there is nothing for it to run on.
Queue priority does not depend on your plan. It depends on your balance: while you have balance, or On-Demand enabled, requests go straight through. Only when both are exhausted does a paid account fall to a slower queue rather than failing outright. A Free account is refused with a message pointing at Pricing instead of being queued.
How to choose the right plan
- Lite — trying Lume out, course work, occasional tasks. $5 of usage covers a fair amount of light chat.
- Pro — a working developer using the agent daily on their own project. This is the plan most people should start on.
- Pro+ — the agent is doing a substantial share of your work: long sessions, big refactors, frequent SOLO runs.
- Ultra — heavy or professional use, several long agent sessions a day, or the largest context windows on the most expensive models.
If you are unsure, start lower. Upgrading takes effect immediately, and a usage package covers an unusually heavy month without changing your plan.
Billing rules
Billed by token. Every chat message and every agent turn consumes tokens, and each request is priced separately:
Cost ($) = tokens processed × the model's rate
Billed by request. Each model request is billed on its own — including every step in an agent loop and every subagent it spawns. A task that takes the agent twelve turns is twelve billed requests, which is why a precise instruction is cheaper than a vague one.
Models are not priced alike. A more capable model costs several times more per token than a lightweight one, so the same question can cost noticeably more or less depending on what you have selected. Current per-model rates are on the Models page — kept in one place so there is only ever one number to trust.
Your own API key is not billed by us. Connect your own provider in settings and those requests go to that provider on your key; they never touch your Lume balance.
The order of spending is: Basic → usage package → On-Demand, and within that, whichever balance expires soonest goes first. You can see what remains at any time in Account Settings or in the usage widget in the Lume status bar.
Payment methods
Payments are processed by Stripe. We accept:
- Credit and debit cards: Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, Diners Club, JCB, UnionPay
- Apple Pay — on Safari and iOS devices with a card in Wallet
- Google Pay — on Chrome and Android devices with a card in Google
- Link — Stripe's saved-card service
Note: Apple Pay and Google Pay are not separate payment methods; they are ways of presenting a card, so they appear as buttons only on a device that can produce one. PayPal, Alipay, WeChat Pay, BLIK and Przelewy24 are not available — our merchant account cannot offer them, and we would rather say so here than have you hunt for a button that is not coming.
Your card is saved after the first payment so later purchases and On-Demand charges do not ask for it again. Cards are entered only in Stripe's own fields — Lume never sees or stores a card number.
Subscriptions, invoices and refunds
- Invoices and receipts are issued for every charge and are available from your account.
- Subscriptions renew automatically until you cancel. Cancel any time in Account Settings; access continues to the end of the period you have already paid for, and until then you can resume the subscription from the same page with no new charge. Cancelling also switches On-Demand off straight away, so nothing new accrues; whatever is already on the meter is settled the same way as when you turn On-Demand off yourself. A subscription whose renewal payment failed has no paid period left: cancelling it ends it at once and voids the unpaid invoice.
- One-Month plans are billed once and do not auto-renew. When one ends the account returns to Free — the editor and code completion keep working, and AI resumes as soon as there is balance again.
- Usage packages are one-time purchases and never renew. They expire 12 months after purchase.
- Deleting your account (Account Settings → Danger Zone) cancels any subscription immediately, without a refund for the rest of the paid period; remaining allowance and usage packages are lost with it. Unpaid invoices are voided, saved cards are removed and nothing more is charged. Records of past payments are kept, as the law requires.
- Refunds are handled by support rather than automatically. On a refund, the unused portion of the balance from that payment is removed and usage already spent is not clawed back. Write to support@lume.computer with the invoice.
Taxes
Prices are shown excluding tax unless stated otherwise. Any applicable tax is calculated and displayed at checkout before you confirm — the amount depends on your billing country and, for business customers, on the tax identifier you provide. The tax charged appears on the invoice for that payment.
FAQs
What happens when I run out of balance? If On-Demand is enabled, usage keeps accruing and is charged to your card every $3. If it is off, a paid account drops to a slower queue and a Free account is refused until there is balance again.
Does unused Basic usage carry over? No. It resets at the start of each billing cycle. A usage package is the thing that persists — it stays valid for 12 months from purchase.
Can I use Lume without paying at all? Yes, for everything that is not AI chat or the agent: the editor, extensions, Git, remote development, and 2,000 code completions a month. Paid-model chat needs balance.
How do I stop On-Demand charging my card? Turn On-Demand off in Account Settings. Anything already accrued is still charged; nothing further accrues.
For anything not covered here, including invoice and refund requests, contact support@lume.computer.