AI Agent Trust & Governance
Arcade Growth plan: what’s included and when do usage charges kick in?
6 min read
The Growth plan is built for teams moving from “this works in a demo” to “we’re running real agents in production,” without jumping straight to an enterprise contract. It keeps pricing transparent and usage-based, while unlocking the governance and scale you need once you’re past experimentation.
Quick Answer: Arcade’s Growth plan adds a low monthly platform fee on top of usage, with unlimited toolkit access and support. Usage charges kick in as you consume platform resources (runtime hours, auth flows, etc.), and if you exceed your plan limits you’re automatically upgraded to the next tier with advance notice.
Frequently Asked Questions
What’s actually included in the Arcade Growth plan?
Short Answer: Growth includes unlimited access to toolkits, cloud and self-hosted deployment options, and email support with an SLA, plus a fixed monthly platform fee and pay-as-you-go usage.
Expanded Explanation:
On Growth, you get access to the same MCP runtime fundamentals that power production deployments: the ability to run the Arcade runtime in the cloud or on your own infrastructure, connect agents to systems like Google Workspace, Slack, GitHub, and Salesforce, and enforce user-specific authorization without building OAuth and token plumbing from scratch.
You’re not capped on which toolkits you can use—tool access is unlimited across plans. Growth adds higher limits, additional self-hosted capacity, and support that’s responsive enough for teams who are rolling out agents to real users. Pricing remains transparent and usage-based: there’s a small platform fee plus metered runtime usage. All concrete numbers and limits live on the public pricing page so there are no surprises.
Key Takeaways:
- Growth = unlimited toolkit access + higher limits + email support with SLA.
- You pay a platform fee plus usage; details are always visible at arcade.dev/pricing.
When do usage charges start on the Growth plan?
Short Answer: Usage charges start as soon as you’re on Growth and begin consuming metered resources (like runtime hours); if you cross plan limits, Arcade will notify you and then automatically upgrade you to the next tier.
Expanded Explanation:
The Growth plan has two components: a monthly platform fee and usage-based metering. The platform fee is fixed—once you switch to Growth, that fee starts immediately. Metered usage accumulates as your agents run: executing tools, handling auth challenges, and keeping runtimes online (cloud-hosted or self-hosted).
If your actual usage stays within the Growth thresholds, you simply pay your usage plus the platform fee. If you consistently exceed your plan limits (for example, runtime hours or user challenge volume), Arcade will notify you before automatically moving you to a higher tier that matches your usage profile. You keep building; you don’t have to babysit limits day to day.
Steps:
- Upgrade or sign up for the Growth plan (platform fee begins).
- Run agents and tools; usage-based charges accrue as you consume resources.
- If you exceed Growth limits, Arcade notifies you and then auto-upgrades you to the next tier.
How is Growth different from the Free and Enterprise plans?
Short Answer: Free is for early experiments, Growth is for sustained multi-user deployments with SLAs, and Enterprise is for organizations that need dedicated isolation, advanced governance, and custom contracts.
Expanded Explanation:
All three plans give you access to the same core idea: a runtime between AI and action with secure, user-specific authorization. The differences are in limits, governance, and support.
Free is optimized for solo builders and small teams validating their first agent. You get unlimited toolkit access but tighter limits and community-based support (GitHub Discussions). Growth removes many of those constraints, adds email support with an SLA, and gives you more headroom for serious usage without jumping into an enterprise sales cycle.
Enterprise is where you land if you’re standardizing agents as a core part of your stack or you’re hitting true “enterprise-level usage.” You move to dedicated tenant isolation, full audit logs, RBAC, SSO/SAML, and a dedicated account rep—plus custom SLAs and volume pricing.
Comparison Snapshot:
- Free: Unlimited toolkits, shared tenancy, GitHub Discussions support, lower limits; ideal for experiments and prototypes.
- Growth: Unlimited toolkits, higher limits, cloud and self-hosted options, email support with SLA; ideal for teams running real users through agents.
- Enterprise: Dedicated tenant, audit logs, RBAC, SSO/SAML, dedicated account rep & custom SLA; best for regulated or large orgs and very high volume.
How do I move to the Growth plan and start using it in production?
Short Answer: Sign up or switch to Growth from your Arcade account, point your agent stack at the Arcade MCP runtime, and start deploying runtimes (cloud or self-hosted) to execute tools in your real systems.
Expanded Explanation:
Transitioning to Growth doesn’t require a platform migration—the MCP runtime and tools are the same; you’re just unlocking more capacity and support. Once Growth is enabled, you can freely mix Arcade-hosted runtimes with your own self-hosted ones and start routing tool calls from your agents.
Because Arcade is MCP-native, it works with your existing client stack: Cursor, Claude, LangGraph, and other MCP-compatible frameworks. Credentials stay in the runtime—never in the LLM—so as you scale usage on Growth, you keep the same security posture: scoped OAuth, user-specific permissions, and an audit trail at the runtime level.
What You Need:
- An Arcade account on the Growth plan (platform fee active, usage metered).
- An agent stack (e.g., Claude, Cursor, LangGraph) configured to call Arcade MCP tools (e.g.,
Google.SendEmail,Gmail.ListEmails,Google.CreateEvent,Slack.PostMessage).
What happens if I outgrow the Growth plan or hit enterprise-level usage?
Short Answer: If you exceed Growth limits, you’ll be notified and automatically upgraded; if your usage reaches enterprise scale, you’ll need to move to an Enterprise plan within 30 days.
Expanded Explanation:
Arcade is intentionally blunt about pricing: transparent, usage-based, no surprise invoices. On Growth, you can keep scaling until your usage clearly resembles an enterprise footprint. When that happens, the system doesn’t just cut you off. You’ll get a notification that your usage is approaching or exceeding Growth’s design, and if you cross those guardrails, you’re automatically upgraded to the next tier so production agents keep running.
For sustained enterprise-level usage—think large teams, cross-org deployments, or high volumes of runtime hours and auth challenges—Arcade expects a transition to an Enterprise Plan within 30 days of notification. That’s when features like tenant isolation, audit logs, RBAC, and SSO/SAML become relevant anyway, and you’ll also get a dedicated account rep and custom SLA.
Why It Matters:
- You keep continuity: agents don’t stop working just because you’re successful.
- Enterprise gives you the governance controls (audit logs, RBAC, SSO/SAML) security teams expect at higher volumes.
Quick Recap
The Growth plan is for teams who’ve proven their agent concept and now need reliable, multi-user execution without losing the simplicity of usage-based pricing. You pay a small platform fee plus metered usage, with unlimited toolkit access and higher limits than Free. If you exceed those limits, Arcade notifies you and upgrades you—eventually guiding you to Enterprise once your usage and governance needs match that profile. All specific prices, limits, and features are published at arcade.dev/pricing, so you can model costs before you commit.