Why was I charged for a free trial

Description

You may see charges on your Confluent Cloud account even though you signed up for a free trial with promotional credits (for example, $400). This article explains how the free trial works, common reasons you can still be billed, and how to review and stop further charges.

Applies To

Confluent Cloud

Cause

The Confluent Cloud free trial is credit-based, not time‑unlimited. Your organization receives a fixed amount of free credit (for example, $400) that can be used for eligible Confluent Cloud resources during a limited trial period (typically 30 days). Once either:

• the free credit is fully consumed, or
• the trial period ends,

any active billable resources (such as Kafka clusters, connectors, Flink applications, or Stream Governance features) start accruing standard usage charges against your saved payment method.

You may be charged during or after a free trial in scenarios such as:

• You used more than the included free credit within the trial window.
• The trial period ended, but your clusters or other resources continued to run.
• You reactivated a suspended organization by adding a payment method or promo code and continued using resources; after available credits were consumed, additional usage became billable.

Resolution

Confirm what was charged and for which period

1. Sign in to the Confluent Cloud Console.
2. Go to Billing & payment from the Administration menu.
3. On the Billing overview tab, select the relevant environment and billing month.
4. Note the accrued amount, invoice total, and the usage period shown on the invoice.

Check your free trial credit status

1. Open the Payment details & contacts tab on the Billing & payment page.
2. Review:
   • Free credit balance (how much of your trial or promo credit remains).
   • Credit expiration date.
3. Compare below:
   • When your free credit was fully consumed, or
   • When the trial credit expired.
4. If the charge date is after the credit was consumed or expired, the usage is billable and not covered by the trial.

Identify resources that generated usage

1. For each environment, check the following in the Cloud Console:
   • Kafka clusters (all types and sizes).
   • Fully managed connectors.
   • Flink compute pools and applications.
   • Stream Governance / Schema Registry and related services.
2. For the billing period in question, determine whether any of these resources were:
   • Running after the free credit was used up, or
   • Left running after the trial period ended.
3. If the organization has since been suspended or deleted, be aware that:
   • Charges stop accruing after deletion or suspension completes.
   • You may still see a final invoice for usage that occurred before deletion/suspension.

Please Note: Costs are determined by hourly usage. You may still incur charges for the final hour of resource activity while the deletion process is being finalized.

Stop future charges

1. If you no longer need Confluent Cloud:
   • Delete any remaining clusters, connectors, Flink resources, and other billable services.
   • If you are an organization admin and do not plan to use the account again, delete the organization from the Cloud Console.
2. If you want to stay within the free tier while the trial is active:
   • Use smaller cluster sizes and minimal resources.
   • Regularly monitor your free credit balance and expiry on the Payment details & contacts tab.
3. Before deleting your organization, ensure that:
   • You have exported any required data, and
   • You understand that organization deletion is permanent and cannot be undone.

Validation: After you delete or stop any unneeded resources and (optionally) your organization, the Billing & payment page should show no new accrued charges after the current billing cycle.