Upgrades & downgrades
Changing plans affects both the payment subscription and Starfire product entitlements. The two sides must remain reconciled.
Before changing a plan
Review:
- current billing context: personal or organization
- active subscription
- current credits and usage
- storage
- model access
- FORGE/Research limits
- artifact retention
- organization seats when applicable
Upgrade
An upgrade can take effect immediately or according to the active billing configuration. Stripe can calculate any supported proration while Starfire updates plan entitlements from the resulting subscription state.
Do not assume the UI label changing is the only effect; limits and feature access can change too.
Downgrade
A downgrade can remove access to models, FORGE, Research, storage, API capacity, seats, or retention features depending on the target plan.
Before downgrading, review whether existing usage/resources exceed the lower plan’s limits.
Seat changes
For seat-based organization subscriptions, quantity changes should remain attached to the existing organization billing relationship whenever possible.
Reconciliation
If Stripe reflects the plan change but Starfire does not, treat it as a reconciliation/provisioning problem. Do not purchase a second subscription as a workaround.
Effective timing
Whether a plan change is immediate or scheduled for a billing boundary is controlled by the active billing implementation and Stripe configuration. The billing UI/customer portal should show the effective state for the account.
Before a significant downgrade, download or relocate important artifacts and review storage/retention rules. Lower plan limits can affect future access even when historical records remain visible.
