Last updated: 9 September 2026
Cartcha bills a flat monthly fee plus metered usage. This page explains what the plan costs, what a grant is, and exactly what does and does not count toward your metered total — so nothing on your invoice is a surprise.
All billing is handled by Shopify. Cartcha never sees or stores your card details, and charges appear on your normal Shopify invoice alongside your other app subscriptions.
1. The plan at a glance
| Plan | Monthly Protection |
| Base price | $19.00 USD per 30-day billing period |
| Free trial | 5 days |
| Included each period | 5,000 grants |
| Above 5,000 grants | $0.01 per grant ($10 per 1,000) |
Your first 5,000 grants each period cost nothing beyond the base fee. Only the grants past that point are charged, at a flat one cent each — there is no higher band and no threshold that re-prices your whole total.
2. What a grant is
When a shopper completes the captcha challenge on a protected product page, Cartcha’s server checks that challenge with the captcha provider and — if it genuinely passed — issues a grant.
A grant is a short-lived, cryptographically signed permission slip that says:
this shopper solved the challenge for this product, for this quantity, on this store, and it is valid until this time.
The grant is attached to the cart line. It is checked again at checkout, and audited once more when the order is created. It cannot be forged, copied to another store, or reused on a second order.
Grants last 24 hours by default, and you can change that in the app’s settings.
One successful solve produces exactly one grant, and one grant is one billable unit.
3. What counts toward your total
One unit is added every time a shopper successfully solves a challenge on a protected product and a grant is issued. That is the whole rule. Everything below is that rule applied to the cases merchants ask about.
These each add one unit
| Situation | Why |
|---|---|
| A shopper solves the challenge and adds a protected product to the cart | The normal case — one solve, one grant |
| The same shopper solves again for a different protected product | Grants are per product; a cart with three protected products needs three |
| A shopper changes the quantity before adding to cart | The grant is issued for a specific quantity, so a changed quantity requires a fresh solve |
| A shopper’s grant expires before they check out, and they solve again | The old grant is no longer valid |
| The same shopper returns on another device or browser | The grant lives in the browser that earned it |
| A shopper solves, then abandons the cart | The grant was issued; it is counted whether or not it is used |
| An order is later cancelled or refunded | The meter counts solves, not orders — see below |
Quantity does not multiply the charge
A grant covers whatever quantity it was issued for. A single solve for a quantity of 10 units is one grant and one billable unit, not ten. You are charged per challenge solved, not per item sold.
Why the meter counts solves, not orders
Cartcha does its work — and incurs its cost — at the moment a challenge is solved, which is exactly when a bot attack hits hardest and converts least. A flood of automated attempts that never becomes a single order is precisely the traffic Cartcha exists to absorb. Metering per solve is what keeps that work sustainable.
4. What does not count
None of the following adds anything to your total:
- Failed, abandoned or incomplete challenges. Only a challenge the provider confirms as passed can produce a grant.
- Products you have not marked as protected. Unprotected products never show a challenge and never mint a grant.
- Retries of the same challenge. If a shopper’s connection drops and their browser retries, Cartcha recognises it as the same solve and returns the same grant. One solve, one unit.
- Re-adding the same product at the same quantity while the grant is still valid. The browser reuses the grant it already has.
- Anything at all while protection is paused — see section 7.
- Solves refused for any reason: the store’s kill switch is off, the subscription is not active, the captcha keys are not configured, or the request fails a security check. A refused solve never becomes a grant, and only grants are counted.
- Orders, checkouts, page views, sessions or products. None of these is metered. Your protected product count is unlimited.
5. Worked examples
Each row is one complete 30-day billing period.
| Grants issued | Included (free) | Charged @ $0.01 | Usage charge | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2,500 | 2,500 | — | $0.00 | $19.00 |
| 5,000 | 5,000 | — | $0.00 | $19.00 |
| 7,500 | 5,000 | 2,500 | $25.00 | $44.00 |
| 10,000 | 5,000 | 5,000 | $50.00 | $69.00 |
| 25,000 | 5,000 | 20,000 | $200.00 | $219.00 |
| 50,000 | 5,000 | 45,000 | $450.00 | $469.00 |
The app’s dashboard shows your grant count and an estimate of the usage charge it implies, so you can watch this during a drop rather than discovering it on an invoice.
6. The free trial and your first invoice
Your first 5 days are free — you are not charged the $19.00 base fee for them.
Grants issued during the trial are still billable. Shopify does not open a billing cycle until the trial ends, so trial usage is held and reported into your first paid billing period, where it shares that period’s single 500-grant allowance.
In plain terms: the trial is free time, not free usage. If you issue 3,000 grants during the trial and 4,000 in your first paid period, your first invoice sees 7,000 grants — 5,000 included, 2,000 charged at $0.01, for $20.00 of usage on top of the $19.00 base.
We would rather state this plainly here than have it appear unexplained on your first bill.
7. When Cartcha stops issuing grants
Protection pauses — and the meter stops entirely — in any of these situations:
- You switch protection off. The “Turn Off Protection” control in the app pauses enforcement store-wide, immediately.
- Your subscription is not active — cancelled, declined, expired, frozen, or never approved.
- You hit the free-trial safety ceiling. During the trial only, Cartcha stops issuing grants after 10,000 of them. This is a bot-flood circuit breaker for stores that have not paid yet, not a billing boundary. It is lifted the moment your trial ends.
In every one of these cases Cartcha fails open. Protected products stay buyable and the challenge stops being required — your shoppers are never blocked because of a billing state. You lose bot protection, not sales.
8. Rate safeguards
Cartcha admits up to 1,000 grants per protected product per 5-minute window. This is sized for a genuine drop, and normal traffic will not reach it. If a single product exceeds it, further solves in that window are refused (and not charged) until the window rolls over.
9. How and when usage is reported
Cartcha reports your usage to Shopify every 15 minutes, so new grants normally appear in your Shopify billing view within the quarter hour. Reporting is designed so a failed or repeated report can never double-charge you: every report carries a unique key that Shopify de-duplicates permanently, and Cartcha only advances its own record once Shopify has accepted the report.
If reporting is interrupted, nothing is lost and nothing is counted twice — the outstanding amount is simply included in the next successful report.
10. Changing or cancelling your plan
Manage or cancel your subscription from Settings → Apps and sales channels in your Shopify admin, or by uninstalling Cartcha. Shopify handles the cancellation and any proration according to its own billing terms.
When a subscription ends, Cartcha pauses protection automatically and your protected products remain fully buyable. Uninstalling also erases your store’s data — see the Privacy Policy.
11. Questions about a charge
Use the contact form on whoooop.co.uk, choose Cartcha as the project type, and
give us your store’s .myshopify.com domain and the billing period in question — we will walk you
through the grant count behind it.
Prices are in USD and exclude any tax Shopify applies in your jurisdiction. We may change pricing in future; existing subscribers are notified before any change takes effect, and a price change requires your approval through Shopify before it can apply to you.