Plans and billing

TL;DR

1. What each plan includes

Every number is per account. The API holds your account to exactly these numbers, and the pricing page on the Plotwork website shows the same ones.

Both plans include every diagram tool. Pro includes everything in Free with higher limits.

The local server, which you start with npx, makes no network requests by default, needs no account and has no limit. A plan applies to the hosted MCP server and to the REST API. Publishing a diagram over the REST API, the portal and the hosted MCP server work on every plan, while calling the drawing and checking routes of the REST API directly needs a plan that includes it, which is Pro. The plan belongs to your account, so every API key and every connected agent on the account shares its limits.

Hosted diagrams are public links to the pictures of your diagrams. Hosted diagrams explains how to publish one, who can see it and how long it is kept.

An organisation is a private library that a team shares, and it has the plan of the account that owns it. A Pro owner gives the whole organisation the Pro limits, a Free owner gives it the Free ones, and a member's own plan changes nothing for it. The organisation keeps its own pool of diagrams, apart from the owner's personal ones. Organisations lists the limits that apply and explains roles, invitations and keys.

2. Upgrade to Pro

1. Sign in at app.plotwork.dev (opens in a new tab) and open the Plan page.
2. Choose Upgrade to Pro. The browser goes to a Stripe page.
3. Pay there. Stripe takes the payment, so Plotwork never sees or stores your card details.
4. You return to the Plan page, which confirms the payment. It says Pro is active once your plan has updated.

Your new limits apply within a minute of the payment going through. Diagrams you already host stop expiring at once.

3. Manage billing and cancel

The Plan page shows your plan, its status and the date your current period renews or ends. Choose Manage billing to open the Stripe Billing Portal in the same tab, where you can change your card. Cancelling and reading your receipts are done on the Plan page itself.

An account that has never been on Pro has no billing account to manage yet. Upgrade to Pro first.

4. The daily call limit

The limit counts calls to your account across the hosted MCP server and the REST API.

The count is for one UTC day. It starts again at 00:00 UTC, which is the same moment for every account.

A separate per-minute limit applies to each key. It protects the service, and it does not depend on your plan. Wait a minute and call again when you reach it.

The 429 response

When all of the day's calls are spent, the API answers HTTP 429 with usage.daily_limit as its errorCode. The retry-after header gives the seconds until 00:00 UTC, and the ratelimit header gives what is left and the same time.

HTTP/1.1 429 Too Many Requestsretry-after: 3600ratelimit: "daily";r=0;t=3600

1{2  "error": true,3  "errorCode": "usage.daily_limit",4  "message": "This account has used all 300 calls for today. The count resets at 00:00 UTC.",5  "details": {6    "limit": 300,7    "used": 300,8    "resetsAt": 1791590400000,9    "retryAfterSeconds": 360010  },11  "requestId": "7c1d0a3e-5f2b-4b6e-8a90-3d4e5f6a7b8c"12}

The example is a Free account. A Pro account sees its own limit. The MCP server answers a spent limit with HTTP 429 and a JSON-RPC error with code -32029, and usage.daily_limit in the error data.

Calls over the limit are refused, not billed. You can wait for 00:00 UTC, or upgrade to Pro for a higher limit.

The REST API on the Free plan

Every plan may publish a diagram over REST, and every plan has the portal and the hosted MCP server, which do the same drawing and checking. On the Free plan, an API key sent to a drawing or checking route of the REST API (POST /v1/diagrams/draw and the other /v1 routes, except publishing) is refused with HTTP 403 and the error code plan.rest_not_included. A refused call is not counted toward the daily limit. Use the hosted MCP server, or upgrade to Pro.

5. When a payment fails

Stripe retries a failed payment. While it does, Pro stays on, and the Plan page says that your last payment failed. Update your card in Manage billing to keep Pro.

If no payment goes through and the subscription ends, your account moves to Free, and your hosted diagrams follow the same rule as when Pro ends.

6. See your usage

Reading your usage is not counted toward the limit.

See also