Pricing data last verified: May 2026. Always verify current rates at https://catalyst.zoho.com/pricing.html before quoting estimates to clients.
Overview
- Pay-per-use model with generous monthly free tiers.
- Free trial: New customers get $250 USD in credits, valid for 60 days from the date claimed.
- Minimum billing: $5/project/month once any free tier limit is exceeded.
- No upfront commitments. Subscription option also available.
- Free tier is account-wide (shared across all projects).
Pricing Table (USD)
Serverless
| Component |
Unit Price |
Unit |
| Functions |
$0.000016 |
per GB-second |
| Circuits |
$0.00002 |
per state transition |
| AppSail |
$0.08 |
per GB-hour |
Data Store
| Operation |
Unit Price |
Unit |
| SELECT |
$0.00006 |
per request |
| INSERT |
$0.0001 |
per request |
| UPDATE |
$0.00008 |
per request |
| DELETE |
$0.00008 |
per request |
| Storage |
$0.02 |
per GB/month |
Cache
| Operation |
Unit Price |
Unit |
| GET |
$0.00004 |
per request |
| PUT |
$0.00006 |
per request |
| UPDATE |
$0.00006 |
per request |
Stratus (Object Storage)
| Operation |
Unit Price |
Unit |
| Upload |
$0.000005 |
per request |
| Download |
$0.0000004 |
per request |
| Storage |
$0.02 |
per GB/month |
Other Backend
| Component |
Unit Price |
Unit |
| API Gateway |
$0.000001 |
per request |
| Web Client Hosting |
$0.0000004 |
per request |
| Mail |
$0.001 |
per email |
| Push Notifications |
$0.00002 |
per notification |
| Search |
$0.00004 |
per query |
SmartBrowz
| Operation |
Unit Price |
Unit |
| Headless Browser |
$0.1188 |
per hour |
| PDF Conversions |
$0.0033 |
per PDF |
| BrowserLogic |
$0.000002 |
per invocation |
DevOps
| Operation |
Unit Price |
Unit |
| APM |
$0.00002 |
per request |
| Automation Testing |
$0.005 |
per test case |
| Application Alerts |
$0.0005 |
per alert |
| Pipeline Build & Deploy |
$0.00016 |
per GB-second |
Zia AI/ML APIs
All Zia operations: $0.001 per request (OCR, Face Analytics, Image Moderation, Object Recognition, Barcode Scanner, AutoML Prediction, Text Analytics)
ConvoKraft
Messages: $0.0006 per message
QuickML
| Operation |
Unit Price |
Unit |
| Model Inference (0–25K) |
$0.0025 |
per API call |
| Model Inference (25K–100K) |
$0.002 |
per API call |
| Model Inference (>100K) |
$0.001 |
per API call |
| LLM Input Tokens |
$0.2 |
per million |
| LLM Output Tokens |
$0.4 |
per million |
Slate
| Operation |
Unit Price |
Unit |
| Build & Deploy |
$0.00016 |
per GB-second |
| Hosting Storage (CDN) |
$0.0001 |
per MB |
| Requests (CDN & Origin) |
$0.000004 |
per request |
| ISR Read |
$0.0000003 |
per request |
| ISR Write |
$0.000003 |
per request |
Free Tier (Monthly, Account-Wide)
Serverless
| Component |
Free |
| Functions |
25,000 GB-seconds |
| Circuits |
2,000 state transitions |
| AppSail |
15 GB-hours |
Data Store
| Operation |
Free |
| SELECT |
10,000 requests |
| INSERT |
5,000 requests |
| UPDATE |
1,000 requests |
| DELETE |
1,000 requests |
| Storage |
5 GB |
Cache
| Operation |
Free |
| GET |
1,000 requests |
| PUT |
5,000 requests |
| UPDATE |
5,000 requests |
Other
| Component |
Free |
| Stratus Upload |
2,000 requests |
| Stratus Download |
10,000 requests |
| Stratus Storage |
5 GB |
| API Gateway |
100,000 requests |
| Web Client Hosting |
300,000 requests |
| Mail |
100 emails |
| Push Notifications |
500 notifications |
| Search |
1,000 queries |
| SmartBrowz Headless |
5 hours |
| SmartBrowz PDFs |
50 PDFs |
| BrowserLogic |
25,000 GB-seconds |
| Zia APIs (all combined) |
100 calls |
| ConvoKraft Messages |
1,000 messages |
| QuickML Inference |
500 API calls |
| Slate CDN Requests |
300,000 requests |
| Slate Storage |
500 MB |
Billing Rules
- Free tier is account-wide — shared across all projects.
- Minimum $5/project/month once any free tier limit exceeded. If usage = $7 across 2 projects: $7 + $5 = $12.
- Billable = Max(0, Usage - Free Tier). Cost = Billable × Unit Price.
- Free trial credits ($250) applied against invoices. After 180 days, normal billing begins.
GB-Seconds Calculation
GB-seconds = (Memory in MB / 1024) × Execution Time in Seconds × Number of Invocations
Example: 500 invocations, 512 MB, 2 seconds each:
GB-seconds = (512/1024) × 2 × 500 = 500 GB-sec
Cost = (500 - 25,000 free) = 0 billable → $0.00
Cost per invocation at each memory tier (1-second duration)
| Memory (MB) |
Cost per invocation |
10K/month |
100K/month |
| 128 |
$0.000002 |
$0.02 |
$0.20 |
| 256 |
$0.000004 |
$0.04 |
$0.40 |
| 512 |
$0.000008 |
$0.08 |
$0.80 |
| 1024 |
$0.000016 |
$0.16 |
$1.60 |
Key insight: 128 MB is 8× cheaper per second than 1024 MB. Choose the smallest memory that doesn't cause failures.
Typical Monthly Costs
| App Type |
Range |
Primary Drivers |
| Simple web app (< 1K users) |
$0–$10 |
Within or near free tier |
| API backend (10K req/day) |
$5–$50 |
Data Store, Functions, API Gateway |
| Data processing (1M rows/mo) |
$50–$500 |
Data Store writes, Job Scheduling |
| Data processing (100M rows/mo) |
$2,000–$30,000+ |
Data Store writes dominate |
| ML-powered app |
$10–$200 |
Zia APIs, QuickML, Data Store |
| Chat application |
$5–$50 |
ConvoKraft, Functions, Cache |
Cost Estimation Pitfalls
- Processing multiplier — one user action triggers multiple ops. E.g., "save record" = 1 INSERT + 2 SELECTs + 1 Cache PUT + 1 event.
- DataStore is often the dominant cost for data-heavy apps. INSERT at $0.0001/request adds up fast.
- Cache reduces DataStore costs — higher cache hit rate = fewer SELECT calls.
- APM costs scale with executions — at millions of executions, $0.00002/req becomes material.
- Free tier erodes at scale — don't over-optimize for free tier savings in large projections.
INR & Regional Pricing
Catalyst invoices in the currency attached to the credit card:
- US DC → USD, IN DC → INR, EU DC → EUR
For INR rates, visit https://catalyst.zoho.com/pricing.html from an India DC account.
All estimates in this skill are in USD. For INR pricing, direct users to the official pricing page.
Common Errors
| Error |
Cause |
Fix |
| Cost estimate doesn't match invoice |
Free tier resets monthly; partial months billed at full rate |
Always calculate based on full month usage; free tier is per calendar month |
| INR pricing differs from USD estimate |
Separate regional pricing applies to India DC accounts |
Direct India DC users to catalyst.zoho.com/pricing.html for accurate INR rates |
| Unexpected GB-seconds charge |
Cold start overhead counted toward execution time |
Cold starts add ~100–300 ms; factor this in for high-frequency functions |
| Free tier exhausted earlier than expected |
Multiple environments (Development + Production) share the same free tier quota |
Each Catalyst project counts as one quota pool across all environments |
