Billing FAQ
You can also find more information on the internal page of UBELIX
Q: Will there be a possibility to cap my bill? A: Yes. We will provide a possibility to set-up a price-limit per project. This limit will be evaluated before starting a job. Also, cost-intensive jobs will print a warning-message on submit. Please note that the cost ceiling cannot be guaranteed in all cases, as simultaneous job submissions may cause one job to start before the other is recorded, potentially exceeding the limit.
Q: How often will we receive a bill? A: We will send out bills monthly.
Q: Is it possible to pre-pay my computing-costs? A: No, because of financial restrictions, we cannot accept money for computing in advance. You can although invest into resources.
Q: Can group-leaders monitor usage? A: Yes, costs can be queried by everybody.
Q: How does UBELIX on-demand work with billing? A: Exactly the same as with cli-jobs: The chosen resources and walltimes are billed on the selected WCKey
Q: What can I do if I plan a course? Will this be billed? A: No, courses will remain for free. Please get in touch at least 14 days ahead of the course.
Q: Is the pricing-model SNSF-compatible? A: Yes. Prices for both storage-products as well as computing on UBELIX have been reviewed and accepted by SNSF.
Q: Does the pricing scheme also comply with other funders like innosuisse or SBFI A: Most likely, yes. We know from experience that projects already have been funded successfully. Please refer to the grants-office for further discussion.
Q: How volatile will the published prices be? A: Prices for Hardware - especially GPUs - tend to be quite volatile. In order to keep our offer stable, we will ask for new prices twice a year. We reserve the right to adjust more frequently.
Q: Is the F2-Freetier dependent on group-size? A: No, The calculation is done per project. Please note that if this gets abused, we might have to stop providing that free-tier.
Q: How does UBELIX compare to cloud providers? A: As of 2025, UBELIX is 5–10x cheaper and includes management, energy, software, storage, staff etc.