Monthly Pricing Prepayment Pricing Free credits
Data fees explained
Summary
- No fixed monthly fee. We charge per location update and you can prepay
- Usage is unlimited, but your device bill is capped after 300 updates (£7-15 depending on discount)
- You can save money by prepaying for data
- If you have many devices, they all count towards the same bill and discounts are applied based on the total used
- Prices are all-inclusive with no hidden extras
- A connectivity charge (£20/device) is due every 5 years (first 5 years included)
- Each new device gets 300 free location credits. At 1 update per day, that’s nearly 10 months free. They will last you at least one month but could last
Introduction
All Lightbug devices come with a built-in SIM card, unlimited support & data storage and free use of Lightbug software tools, including the App and API.
We roll all those items into a single cost: price per location.
There is a charge for having the SIM card enabled on the mobile phone network but thanks to our scale, we can include 5 years of connectivity into the device cost. You can top this up as needed (£20 for each additional 5 years).
This means what is left to pay is the actual data usage and cloud server costs (+ support and development). Those things mostly scale with usage, so it makes sense to bill for usage.
Pricing
The base price per location is £0.048 (or £0.04, €0.047, US$0.054 excluding VAT). Every time a device transmits (e.g. updates its position in the cloud), a counter is incremented for your account. If you have multiple devices, they all add to your counter.
At the end of each month, a bill is generated for your total usage. Usage per device per month is capped to 300 updates to make sure your bill stays small. There is also a minimum charge of 10 locations per bill to cover credit card processing fees.
Discounts are automatically calculated for each invoice. If you have 100 devices on your account, each sending 3000 locations per month, that equates to a bill of 30 000 credits
300 credits (3000 is capped) × 100 devices = 30 000 credits
That gets you a discount of 37.5%, as shown in the table below
| Number of updates | Price per update | EUR | USD | Discount |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 - 9,999 | £0.040* | €0.048 | $0.054 | 0% |
| 10,000 - 99,999 | £0.025* | €0.030 | $0.035 | 37.5% |
| 100,000 - 999,999 | £0.020* | €0.024 | $0.028 | 50% |
| 1,000,000 + | £0.015* | €0.018 | $0.021 | 62.5% |
* prices exclude UK VAT where applicable
Prepayment
You might be wondering how to get a discount if you only need one device: a similar logic applies if you buy all your location credits at once. For example, if you buy 2 years’ unlimited data in one go, this equates to 7200 updates
300 credits (the montly cap) × 24 months = 7200 credits
Discounts work a little differently if you prepay, you can find the price for various location bundles (update Packs) in the table below.
| Pack Name | Number of updates | Price GBP | EUR | USD | Discount |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pack9 | 900 | £30.00 | €36.00 | $41.00 | 31% |
| Pack18 | 1800 | £55.00 | €66.00 | $75.00 | 36% |
| Pack36 | 3600 | £99.00 | €118.00 | $135.00 | 43% |
| Pack72 | 7200 | £179.00 | €213.00 | $245.00 | 48% |
prices include taxes where applicable
Free Credits
Basic connectivity is included for 5 years as part of the device cost. This means there is no fixed recurring fee, you simply pay for each update in the form of a “credit” (see introduction for more detail)
On top of this, each device comes with 300 free credits as standard. Depending on how you use them, this will cover between 1 month and 5 years of usage at no extra charge
1 month of unlimited usage = 300 credits
10 months × 30 days × 1 update per day = 300 credits (approximately)
Limits
There are no limits for you other than the expiry of location credits 5 years after they were purchased. If you configure your device to send once every 10 seconds (some 259,200 updates per month), even in a foreign country, your bill will not increase beyond the cap.
Cap = 300 × 0.048 = 14.40 GBP (inc. VAT) per device per month maximum with no prepayment and no volume discounts
You can top up connectivity and credits whenever.
Examples
A) 1000 devices sending every 12h, monthly billing
Total Updates per month (assuming 30 days per month)
= 1,000 devices × 30 days × 2 times per day = 60,000 credits
Total discounted price (approximate)
= 60,000 credits × £0.025 ÷ 1000 devices = 1.5 GBP (exc. VAT) per month per device
B) One device sending every 12h, with prepayment
Total Updates per month (assuming 30 days per month)
= 30 days × 2 times per day = 60 credits
Pre-payment using Pack36
= (3600 credits) ÷ (60 credits per month) = 60 months = 5 years
Total discounted price per month (approximate)
= £99.00 ÷ 60 months = 1.65 GBP (inc. VAT)