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TrackPlay bills on plays. Before the plans and prices, here is the definition, in full, because a billing definition you cannot see is not a definition you can trust.

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What counts as a play

A play is one session in which a viewer genuinely played a video. Not a page load. Not a muted autoplay that started because the browser allowed it. One session, one video, one real watch. Precisely: a play is one distinct (video, session) pair that produced at least one of these events:
  • video-play
  • video-unmute
  • video-resume
  • video-continue
  • video-restart
  • video-autoplay-sound (autoplay that started with sound, unprompted)
Plain muted autoplay is not a play. A video that silently starts because the browser allowed it, with the viewer never engaging, is not counted or billed. On a 30-day sample this was the difference between 12,500 muted autoplays and 958 with-sound autoplays: if TrackPlay billed the muted ones, the bill would be mostly noise.
Bots never count as a play, on any plan, ever.

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The session boundary

A session ends after 30 minutes of inactivity. Everything that happens inside one session is free: pausing and resuming, unmuting, restarting, watching the same video twice. None of it bills again, because it is browser-cached behavior inside a visit TrackPlay already counted. A viewer who genuinely leaves and comes back after the 30-minute gap opens a new session, and that is a new play. That is not double-billing. It is a second visit, and a second visit is real usage.
One session watching two different videos on the same page counts as two plays, not one. The video is part of the identity of a play, so a page with two embeds bills for both if the viewer engages with both.

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Why this matters more than it sounds like it should

Counting raw event rows instead of de-duplicated plays would have over-billed by roughly 1.97 times on real traffic, because a single genuine watch can throw off several qualifying events (every pause-to-play toggle rewrites into a second video-resume, for instance). The de-duplication is what makes the play count on your dashboard the same number you are actually charged for, not an inflated cousin of it.

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Plans

Free trials and monthly prices below are billed in USD. Annual prices are paid up front for the year.
Pro and Scale currently share the same $0.01 per-play overage rate. If you see older marketing copy claiming Scale has a lower overage rate than Pro, that is not accurate in current pricing. Check your plan’s rate on the Billing screen before relying on it as a differentiator.
The Free plan cannot enable overage at all. Once its 1,000 included plays are used, videos stop serving until the period resets or you upgrade.

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Overage is opt-in, twice

Overage means TrackPlay keeps serving plays past your included quota and bills you per extra play instead of cutting your videos off. It never turns on by itself. Two separate conditions both have to be true:
1

Your plan has to allow it

Basic, Pro, and Scale allow overage. Free does not, and there is no override.
2

You have to switch it on

Even on a plan that allows it, overage stays off until you turn it on yourself in Billing. A plan that supports overage does not enable it for you.

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What happens at quota

The two situations below look similar from the outside (a video stops responding) but have opposite causes and opposite timelines. Do not confuse them.
Quota exhaustion has no grace period. The moment your included plays run out, and overage is off, plays stop serving. There is no warning window here, only the two usage emails described below sent before you hit the wall. The enforcement check is cached for up to 5 minutes for performance, so cutoff can lag the exact quota number by at most that cache window, but there is no multi-day cushion the way there is for a failed payment.
TrackPlay emails the account owner at 80% and 100% of the included quota for the current period, once each, so 100% is never a total surprise. Past that, with overage off, videos stop playing for new sessions until the next billing period starts or you upgrade or enable overage. There is one more email, and it is not automatic. If your videos served more plays in the last 30 days than your plan and any bonus plays cover, and nothing on the account is paying for them, TrackPlay may send a usage warning. It states the plays from the last 30 days, how many of them your plan covers, and the plan that fits your volume. Past the Scale plan, it offers a custom plan instead. Reply to it if the numbers look wrong. With overage on, none of this applies: plays past quota keep serving and get billed at your plan’s per-play rate.

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What happens on a failed payment

This is a different situation from quota exhaustion, and it is much less abrupt. A failed charge does not touch your videos immediately.
1

Day 0: payment fails

Your plan moves to a past-due state and the first email goes out. Plays keep serving normally.
2

Day 2: reminder

A second email nudges you to update your payment method. Plays still serve.
3

Day 5: suspension warning

A third email states plainly that plays pause in 2 days. Plays still serve.
4

Day 7: suspension

If the card still has not been fixed, the plan is suspended and a fourth email confirms it. This is the point where plays actually stop.
Four emails go out before anything is cut off, and your videos keep playing for the full 7-day window while they do. This is the opposite of quota exhaustion, which stops the moment the number is hit with no comparable window. If your plays suddenly stopped serving, check which situation you are in: an unpaid invoice gives you a week’s notice, an exhausted quota does not.

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Where to see your usage

Your current play count against your included quota, plus your overage status, lives on the Billing screen under Settings. It reflects the same de-duplicated play count this page describes, the number you are billed on, not a raw event tally.