Understand how your Central usage is measured

Beta

This product is in open beta. It’s available for use but still in active development and may change.

Your Zapier Central usage is measured by the number of activities your assistants use and limited by the plan you choose. This guide will explain how billing and usage cycles work and what is considered an assistant activity.

What is an activity?

Each time one of the following happens in Zapier Central, it's counted as one activity:

• An assistant uses a trigger.
• The assistant answers a question using a data source.
• The assistant runs an action.
• The assistant performs a web browsing or scraping request.
• The assistant performs a web search.
• You send a message to an assistant using the Chrome Extension.

This also applies to triggers, actions and data sources used within behaviors.

Note

• Testing a behavior does not count as an activity.
• Activities do not affect your Zapier task usage.

Example

Example 1 - using the assistant directly

You have an assistant with a behavior that runs once a day and does the following:

• Checks your email inbox for a specific keyword.
• Summarizes each email that contains that keyword.
• Runs an action that adds each as a new task on your Trello board.
• Runs another action to send you a message on Slack about the new tasks.

Each morning, if only one email is found, this action will count as four activities. If two emails with the specific keyword are found, then this action will count as seven activities. The first check would bring both emails, so it would not be run twice.

 

Example 2 - using the assistant through the Chrome extension

You navigate to a LinkedIn profile and send a message to your assistant through Central's Chrome extension. This triggers a behavior that does the following:

• The assistant uses the information in the profile to determine whether a person's current company is already on the list within your data source. 
• If it's not in the data source, the assistant then does a web search for more information on the company.
• Finally, the assistant runs an action that adds new company information to your data source.

Case 1 - The company is already in the data source

If the company is already in the data source, this process counts as three activities:

1. Send a message through the Chrome extension.
2. Trigger a behavior.
3. Search for an answer within the data source.

Case 2 - The company is not in the data source

However, if the company is not there, it counts as five activities:

1. Send a message through the Chrome extension.
2. Trigger a behavior.
3. Search for an answer within the data source.
4. Search the web for information on the company.
5. Runs an action that adds new information to the data source.

Available activities per plan

Each Zapier Central plan offers a different level of activity and amount of data that can be stored for data sources. Learn more about the different Zapier Central plans.

Note

If you have a Team or Enterprise Zapier account, all the users on your account will share a pool of activities. For example, if you have a Central Pro plan, your account members will share 1,500 activities across all the assistants they create.

Activity and billing cycles

The number of available activities resets at the end of your billing cycle and lasts for a month. You'll have access to the activities included in your plan each cycle, and this limit resets on the same date every month.

The billing cycle is defined by the date when you signed up for your account. If you signed up on the 10th of January, for example, your usage will reset every month on the 10th. This applies to both monthly and annual plans. 

You can upgrade to a paid Zapier Central account at any time. When you upgrade from a free account to a paid one, the date when you upgrade becomes your new billing cycle date and your activity limit is reset at that moment. 

What happens if I reach the activity limit?

If you reach your plan's activity limit:

• Your behaviors will no longer run.
• You will not be able to use any actions.
• The assistant will not be able to browse or scrape web pages.
• The assistant will not run web searches.
• Your assistants will not receive trigger events from any apps.
• Your assistants will not be able to find data on your data sources.
• Your assistant will not be available through the Chrome extension.

You will still be able to chat with your assistant even if you reach the activity limit. Zapier will notify you by email once you reach 80% of your activity limit, and again once you reach your full limit. 

Manage your usage

Central displays your activity usage in the left sidebar of the main screen. Click Data usage to view your available usage and the number of activities used by different behaviors and actions for the current billing cycle.

If you're a member of a Team or Enterprise account, the Activity usage you see is for the entire account. However, the Data usage page will only display your own behaviors, instant actions, and data sources.

Manage your billing

Zapier Central is billed as an add-on to your Zapier account. Learn how add-ons work, including how they appear on your invoices and how you can cancel an add-on. 

Note

If you have a Zapier Enterprise account:

• You must contact the Central team to request access to Central.
• Zapier Central does not support the app and action restrictions that you may have enabled in your account. 

Provide feedback and get help

Submit a feature request, provide feedback on existing features, or get help from the Zapier Central team. You can also discuss Central with other users on Zapier's Early Access Program Slack.