Frequently Asked Questions

Run runs on 100% green energy. The waste heat from our servers is reused to warm Dutch buildings — the hot water from your workload helps heat homes and showers. We use Leafcloud's Leaf Sites: no carbon credits, just real impact.

Our servers live inside Dutch apartment buildings and care homes. The heat your instances generate goes straight into the building's hot water system. So your GPU or compute workload doesn't just run — it helps provide warm showers. No waste, no new data centers.

In the Netherlands, in buildings that use the waste heat (Leaf Sites). Your data stays in European, GDPR-aligned infrastructure while your workload contributes to heating those same buildings.

Big cloud, small footprint. By running on Run, you get the same performance as any cloud — but your compute reduces emissions instead of adding to them. Heat that would be wasted goes into hot water. Learn more about Leafcloud's green infrastructure.

Run uses a prepaid credit system. You top up your account balance, and instances are charged from that balance. There are two billing options:

• Daily billing — You're charged once per day for each running instance.
• Monthly billing — You pay upfront for a 30-day period at a discounted rate.

Your balance is deducted automatically. When your balance runs low, you'll receive email notifications so you can top up in time.

• Daily: Charged each day at a per-day rate. Flexible — you only pay for the days you use. Best for short-term or experimental workloads.
• Monthly: Charged upfront for a full 30-day period at a lower effective rate. Best for long-running, stable workloads. If you delete a monthly instance early, the unused portion is refunded.

• Daily instances: Charged once per day (at 02:00 UTC). The first day is charged upfront when you create the instance.
• Monthly instances: Charged upfront for the full 30-day period when you create the instance. Renewal is charged when the period expires.

If the daily billing process is delayed for any reason, catch-up billing ensures you're only charged for the exact days missed — no more, no less. For example, if billing was delayed by 3 days, you'll be charged for all 3 days at once on the next run.

You can top up your account balance from the dashboard. Payments are processed via our payment provider. Once the payment is confirmed, credits are added to your account immediately.

When your balance runs out:

1. You receive a warning email when your balance is getting low (about 3 days of credit remaining).
2. You receive a critical warning when less than 1 day of credit remains.
3. After your balance hits zero, there is a short grace period before your instances are stopped:
   • Daily instances: 1 hour grace period
   • Monthly instances: 1 day grace period
4. If you top up during the grace period, your instances keep running — no action needed.

If your instances were stopped due to insufficient balance and you don't top up:

• Daily instances: A warning email is sent after 3 days. The instance is permanently deleted after 7 days.
• Monthly instances: A warning email is sent after 7 days. The instance is permanently deleted after 14 days.

Once deleted, the instance and its data cannot be recovered. Top up your balance and click Start to resume your instances before this deadline.

Auto-renew controls whether your instance is automatically charged for the next billing period. It is enabled by default for all instances.

• Auto-renew ON: Your instance keeps running and is charged automatically each day or month.
• Auto-renew OFF: Your instance runs until the end of its current paid period, then it is stopped. No further charges are made.

Go to your instance detail page and toggle the “Auto-renew” switch off. You'll see a confirmation showing exactly when your instance will stop.

Your instance continues running until the end of its current paid period:

• Daily instance: Runs until the end of the current paid day.
• Monthly instance: Runs until the end of the current 30-day period.

After that, the instance is stopped automatically. You won't be charged again unless you re-enable auto-renew or click Start to resume the instance.

Yes. You can turn auto-renew back on at any time before the instance is stopped, and billing will resume as normal.

When auto-renew is off, your instance detail page shows an “Expires at” date and time. This is the exact moment your instance will be stopped. When auto-renew is on, there is no expiry — your instance keeps running as long as you have credits.

If auto-renew is on and your balance is sufficient, the next 30-day period is charged automatically and your instance keeps running seamlessly.

If your balance is insufficient for renewal:

1. Your instance continues running during a 1-day grace period.
2. If you top up within the grace period, the renewal happens automatically.
3. If you don't top up within the grace period, your instance is stopped.

Yes. If you delete a monthly instance before its period ends, you receive a prorated refund for the remaining days. For example, if you delete an instance 10 days into a 30-day period, you get roughly 2/3 of the monthly price refunded to your account balance.

If your balance was too low to renew but you top up within the 1-day grace period, your instance stays running and the renewal goes through. You don't need to do anything — it happens automatically.

• Provisioning — Your instance is being created.
• Active — Running and accessible.
• Stopped — Powered off (by you or due to insufficient balance). Click Start to resume.
• Rebooting — Restarting.
• Deleting — Being permanently removed.
• Deleted — Gone. Cannot be recovered.
• Error — Something went wrong during provisioning or an action.

Yes. A stopped instance still reserves cloud resources (CPU, RAM, disk), so it continues to be billed at the normal rate. If you want to stop paying for an instance, you can either delete it or turn off auto-renew and let it expire when the paid period ends.

Go to your instance detail page and click Start. You need sufficient balance to cover at least one billing period (1 day for daily, 30 days for monthly). The upfront charge is deducted and your instance resumes.

Billing period is set when you create the instance and cannot be changed afterwards. If you want a different billing period, create a new instance with the desired option.

Run is a simplified way to launch GPU and compute instances with prepaid credits. A full Leafcloud account (my.leaf.cloud) gives you multiple projects, teams, Managed Kubernetes, full OpenStack control (network, firewall), S3 storage, and pay-after billing.

Sign up at my.leaf.cloud — €2 trial, 2 weeks free (see leaf.cloud/faq).