# Backend usage

> What your plan's backend compute covers, how it's measured and shared across your businesses, the warnings, and what happens if you use it all.

Last updated: October 16, 2026

Source: https://www.willo.ai/docs/plans/backend-usage

Your businesses' backends (the database, sign-in, file storage and backend functions behind your sites) run on computing time. Your plan includes a monthly amount of it, separate from your credits. The **Backend compute allowance** row in [What each plan includes](https://www.willo.ai/docs/reference/plans) shows how much each plan includes, relative to the smallest paid plan.

## How it's measured

Usage is measured by the time a backend is actively working. A backend that's idle costs nothing, so a quiet site uses little.

On an organization plan, the allowance is shared: usage from all your businesses adds up against one monthly amount.

This is separate from credits. Credits pay for Willo's AI work. Backend usage is your site's own database and functions serving your visitors.

## Warnings

Usage is counted per calendar month and checked daily. Willo warns you as your organization nears the month's allowance: at 85% of it, and again at 95%. Early in a month it also emails you if your usage is on course to run over.

## If you use it all

When the allowance is used up, your organization's backends are paused:

- Your sites stay up, and their pages still load.
- Anything that needs the backend stops working until it resumes: sign-in, forms, saved data, and images stored on the backend.

Your data is kept; nothing is deleted. The backends come back on their own on the 1st of the next month (UTC), when the new month's allowance starts.

To bring them back sooner, move to a plan whose allowance covers what you've used this month. They come back within a few minutes of the change. If a backend is still paused after the 1st, or after an upgrade like that, contact support from the **?** menu.

## Getting more

If your sites regularly need more backend time, you can:

- **Move to a bigger plan**, which includes more.
- **Ask about a Backend Boost**, an add-on that raises the allowance on a paid plan. Contact support from the **?** menu.

## Keeping usage down

When a site uses a lot, the usual causes are a page that queries the backend on every visit when it could be built ahead of time, or a scheduled job that runs more often than it needs to. Ask Willo to review the pages and scheduled jobs that use the backend, and to build ahead of time what doesn't need to be live.

Related: [How credits work](https://www.willo.ai/docs/plans/how-credits-work), [How your pages are built](https://www.willo.ai/docs/site/how-pages-are-built).