# Plans and billing

> Compare the Essential, Business and Growth plans, understand quotas and the 14-day trial, and manage your Sphen subscription in Shopify.

Canonical URL: https://sphen.ai/help/billing/
Last updated: 2026-08-14

## What it does

**Settings → Plans** shows the three plans, what each includes, and how much of your monthly allowance you have used. Subscriptions are handled by Shopify: choosing or changing a plan finishes on Shopify's secure page, and billing appears on your Shopify invoice. Cancel any time from your Shopify admin.

### Why it matters

Plans scale with catalog size and how often you want to optimize, not with seats. Picking the wrong tier shows up as a quota wall mid-month — audits covering only part of your catalog, or blog drafts refusing to queue. Matching the tier to your product count and cadence up front costs less than stalling a campaign at day eighteen.

## Setup

1. Open **Settings → Plans**.
2. Use **Billing interval** to compare **Pay monthly** and **Pay yearly**. Yearly is ten months' price for twelve.
3. Pick your tier by catalog size and cadence: **Essential** ($25/month) diagnoses — 3 full scans, 5 blog posts, 20 products per optimization cycle, products only. **Business** ($109/month) operates — 8 scans, 20 posts, 100 products and 25 collections. **Growth** ($219/month) is the largest — 15 scans, 30 posts, 700 products and 50 collections, plus automatic applying, which is still a private beta and not enabled for every store.
4. Press **Choose Essential**, **Choose Business** or **Choose Growth** and complete the selection on Shopify's page.
5. Check **Your usage this month** on the same tab: full visibility scans, blog articles and optimization cycles used against your allowance.
6. Change or cancel later with **Manage plan**, which takes you to the same Shopify-hosted page.

## Reading the results

One full scan means five buyer prompts across five AI engines — that is the unit the scan quota counts, not individual questions. An optimization cycle is one guided pass over the number of products and collections your tier covers. When a cycle runs, an **Audit coverage** note tells you how many of your products the plan covered in that run, which is the honest signal that you have outgrown a tier.

Essential includes a 14-day free trial, and it is the only plan that does. During the trial you get 3 full scans, 5 AI blog posts and 1 optimization cycle, with audits at Essential scale and no collection audits. A countdown appears in the app while it runs.

Hitting a limit is not an error state: the app tells you which allowance is used up, what the next tier includes, and that your allowance resets at the start of next month. Existing data and applied changes are never affected.

## Troubleshooting

### The app says a subscription is required.

Your store has no active Sphen subscription, so audits, AI proposals and blog drafts are paused. Press **Choose a plan** and complete the checkout on Shopify.

### The plan page can't open Shopify's plan selection.

You are outside the embedded admin. Open Sphen from your Shopify admin and try again — the pricing link is built from the store context.

### An action is refused because of a plan limit.

The relevant monthly allowance is used up. Either wait for the reset at the start of next month or upgrade. See [Troubleshooting](/help/troubleshooting) for the quota symptoms.

## Frequently asked questions

### Where do I actually pay?

Through Shopify. Sphen never sees a card; the charge appears on your Shopify bill and cancellation happens in your Shopify admin.

### What happens to my data if I downgrade or cancel?

Changes already applied to your store stay applied — they are ordinary Shopify catalog data. Quotas drop to the new tier from the next cycle.

### Is there an option beyond Growth?

Yes — the **Managed** option, where an agency team runs the whole program for you, including monthly strategy calls and off-site work. It is priced individually and billed outside Shopify; use **Book a strategy call**.

## Still stuck?

Support answers installation, catalog sync, audit, billing, privacy, and account questions for the SPHEN.AI Shopify app. https://sphen.ai/support/