For billing purposes in Ory, a "user" is considered in terms of service usage. This usage is comprised of at least three components: 1. The average daily active users (aDAU), 2. The number of machine-to-machine (M2M) tokens issued, and 3. The number of permission checks. Additionally, your invoice might include extra charges for additional multi-tenant production environments, etc. Usage-based invoices are generated every month and for the current billing period, a draft invoice is generated every six hours. Please note that usage-based invoices only apply to workspaces and projects contained therein, but not to legacy plans that have individual subscriptions. Also, usage credits will be applied to the total service usage, but unused credits will not be carried over to the next billing period. For more information, you can visit the [Ory Console UI](https://console.ory.sh/workspaces/<id>/settings/billing) and the [Ory Pricing Page](https://www.ory.sh/pricing). [Source](https://www.ory.sh/docs/console/usage-billing)