What Are Cycles?

Cycles are the unit OpenCloud uses to pay for compute and storage. Every Cloud Engine consumes cycles as it runs — to execute your code, hold your data in memory, store it over time, and handle network traffic. Think of cycles as prepaid fuel: you top up your Engine, and it draws down cycles as it works.

This article explains what cycles are, what burns them, and how to keep your Engine funded. If you just want to manage billing, jump to Manage Prepaid Cycle Billing and Avoid Suspension.

Why cycles instead of a monthly bill?

Traditional clouds bill you after the fact for servers you rented, whether or not you used them. OpenCloud works the other way: your Engine holds a prepaid balance of cycles and spends them in proportion to the actual work it does.

This model has two advantages:

• You pay for real usage, not reserved capacity sitting idle.
• Costs are predictable and bounded — an Engine can only spend the cycles it holds, so a runaway process can't generate a surprise invoice. (It will, however, run out — see suspension below.)

What burns cycles

A Cloud Engine spends cycles across a few categories:

• Compute — executing your backend's functions. Heavier or more frequent calls burn more.
• Memory & storage — holding your data. Because OpenCloud uses orthogonal persistence, your data lives in your Engine and consumes storage cycles for as long as it's kept.
• Network / messaging — incoming and outgoing calls.
• Idle existence — an Engine consumes a baseline amount just to stay live and ready, even with no traffic.

Key point: storage costs are ongoing. Unlike a one-time compute charge, data you keep continues to draw cycles over time.

Getting and topping up cycles

You add cycles to your account or Engine by [FILL IN: how cycles are acquired — purchased with fiat/card, converted from a token, etc.].

• Conversion / rate: [FILL IN: how cycles are priced — e.g. cost per X cycles, or how a token converts to cycles]
• Topping up an Engine: [FILL IN: CLI command or dashboard step to add cycles to a specific Engine]

For the step-by-step, see Manage Prepaid Cycle Billing and Avoid Suspension.

Cycle burn: watching your balance

Cycle burn is the rate at which your Engine spends cycles — your "fuel gauge." Watching it tells you how long your current balance will last and whether usage is climbing.

You can monitor burn rate and remaining balance from [FILL IN: dashboard / CLI command]. For a full walkthrough, see Monitor Cycle Burn and Node Health.

A few things that increase burn:

• A traffic spike or more active users (scaling up increases capacity and burn).
• Growing stored data.
• Inefficient code that does more work per call than necessary.

Running low: suspension

If an Engine's cycle balance reaches zero, it can be suspended — it stops running, and [FILL IN: what happens to data during suspension — grace period, how long state is retained before deletion].

To avoid this:

• Keep a buffer above your expected burn.
• [FILL IN: whether auto-top-up / low-balance alerts are available].
• Review the prevention steps in Manage Prepaid Cycle Billing and Avoid Suspension.

Quick reference

Next steps

• Manage Prepaid Cycle Billing and Avoid Suspension — Top up, set buffers, stay live.
• Monitor Cycle Burn and Node Health — Track burn and remaining balance.
• Adjust Engine Capacity for Traffic Spikes — Understand how scaling affects burn.