How Tengu bills: per seat, paid upfront, no minimum

Tengu bills the way Figma and Vercel do: per seat, paid upfront. Here is exactly what that means, so there are no surprises on the invoice.

What a seat is

A seat is everyone who can sign in and work: the owner, admins, Operations and members. An invite that hasn't been accepted yet holds a seat too, so the count never jumps when someone finally clicks the link.

Two kinds of people and things never take a seat:

• Client guests. Clients you share lists with read tickets, comment and file requests. They are always free.
• Agents. Claude Code, Tengu Bot and anything that uses an API token are never seats. Run in Claude Code draws on your own Claude plan, and Tengu doesn't charge for it again.

Whether a seat holder did much this month doesn't change the bill. On the team means paid.

The prices

Monthly plans charge each month at its start. Annual plans charge the whole year at its start, at the annual rate: a Board seat comes to $84 a year and a Studio seat to $144.

There is no minimum. A team of one pays for one seat.

Free covers up to 5 people, invites and admins included, with native lists, import from ClickUp, Linear and Jira, Run in Claude Code with QA with Claude, Merge and Ship, the Agent API and webhooks, days off, and hunters. Tengu Bot, time and money, and sharing lists with clients come with the paid plans.

Board adds the review queue with Pass and Send back, bounties, the inbox, the morning scroll, Today, client guests and Tengu Bot in Slack.

Studio adds the timer and weekly timesheets, pay periods and payroll export, budgets that pause timers, pay rates, the Capacity Hub, client hour reports, and Tengu Bot's meetings, video tickets and MCP connections, and its answers from the Google Drive docs your team picks.

Adding someone

If the plan has an open seat, the new person takes it and nothing is charged. If not, inviting them adds a seat, charged at once for the time left until the renewal. The invite goes out only after that payment goes through. Amounts under $0.50 are added to the next invoice instead.

Several invites at once are one payment. If you know the team will grow, you can buy seats ahead in Billing and fill them later.

Admins and Operations can invite people too. When no seat is open, their invite charges the card (someone in Operations adds at most 3 paid seats a day), and the owner and admins get an email with the amount.

Removing someone

Their seat stays paid and open until the renewal, and the next person you add takes it for free. There is no refund or credit for it. Their history stays: time, comments and finished tickets keep their name.

Invites nobody accepts are canceled 14 days after their link expires, which frees the seat.

At the renewal

Plans renew automatically until the owner cancels. The renewal charges for the people on the team then. If three people left during the month, you renew with three fewer seats. Annual teams get reminders 30 and 7 days before, and monthly teams 3 days before, with the seat count and the amount.

The owner cancels in Billing at any time. The plan doesn't renew: it runs to the end of the period you paid for. Until then, seats you add and top-ups (auto top-up too, if it's on) are still charged. Then a team of 5 seats or fewer moves to Free and a bigger team is paused, and the owner and admins get an email saying so. Your data is kept. After 30 days paused, Tengu removes its keys to the tools you connected (ClickUp sign-ins, the Claude routine, Supabase, Intercom, PostHog and Google Drive) and stops imports still running; after 30 days on Free, it removes those Free doesn't include (Supabase, Intercom, PostHog and Google Drive). With Google Drive goes the text Tengu copied from your docs; the docs stay on their shelves and answer again on Studio once whoever picked them connects Google Drive again. The owner and admins hear 7 days before, and you reconnect them when you come back.

Upgrading from Board to Studio happens at once, charged for the time left. Moving down to Board, or switching between monthly and annual, happens at the renewal.

If a payment fails

You have 3 business days to fix it, and the owner or any admin can: update the card or pay the invoice in Billing. After that, a team of 5 seats or fewer moves to Free, and a bigger team is paused until someone pays. Paused months are never billed, and your data is kept, though Tengu removes its keys to the tools you connected after 30 days paused or on Free, as above. Owners and admins can still read everything, export it, remove people and pay. Coming back within 60 days of the stop pays for the grace days used.

Refunds

Annual plans get a pro-rata refund of the unused time if you ask within 14 days of paying for the year (the first payment, a renewal or a switch to annual) or for added seats: write to hello@tengu.work. Refunding the year ends the plan, and with it any discount we gave it, and refunds any seats or upgrade paid since. Added seats are refunded once they're open: remove the people first. Monthly plans and top-ups aren't refunded.

Tengu Bot's AI

Tengu Bot's AI runs on our side, unlike Run in Claude Code. Board and Studio include $2 of AI each month per seat, in one pool for the organization: a 10-person team gets $20 a month. Seats added partway through a period add AI for the time left.

Owners and admins get a heads-up at 80%. At 100% the AI pauses until the next period, or until the owner adds a top-up: $10 adds $8 of AI, $25 adds $20, $50 adds $40. Top-ups are charged when bought and expire a month later, and that month stands still while the plan isn't paid. If the owner turns on auto top-up (it's off until they do), a pack is added and charged to the card each time the AI runs out, up to the number a period they pick and $200 of top-ups a month, with a note each time. Top-ups aren't refunded.

Design partners

A few teams use Studio free for 90 days, then pick the plan that fits. Nothing is charged unless they pick one. A partner who saves a card early is told when the plan starts and what it charges, again 14, 7 and 1 days before, and can cancel in Billing until then without paying anything. In return: a weekly 20-minute call and a case study we publish together.