# What the Free Plan Covers: Method Weights and Usage

> Original page: https://docs.blockvectra.com/en/guides/free-plan/

## What the Free Plan is suited for [#what-the-free-plan-is-suited-for]

BlockVectra's Free Plan provides an out-of-the-box blockchain interface for developers. Without requiring a credit card, you can use it for local development, personal projects, lightweight automation bots, contract event tracking, and moderate-frequency chain data queries. With reasonable call scheduling and efficient endpoints, it usually covers most development testing and prototyping needs.

Billing is metered in Compute Units (CU): each method consumes CU according to its weight, with usage pooled across all chains, JSON-RPC, and the Data API. For detailed billing rules, see the [Pricing page](https://blockvectra.com/en/pricing/).

## Method weights and period capacity [#method-weights-and-period-capacity]

The table below calculates the estimated call capacity for common methods within a single usage window based on the active method weights and platform API data. All numbers are computed at build time from the platform API:

<FreePlanTable lang="en" />

## Task examples and upgrade paths [#task-examples-and-upgrade-paths]

To help you assess usage, here are calculations for representative development tasks:

<FreePlanTasks lang="en" />

## Getting started and upgrading [#getting-started-and-upgrading]

The free quota is ideal for development, testing, and lightweight workloads. When your traffic expands and requires higher concurrency or more compute units, make a paid top-up in the [Console](https://console.blockvectra.com/en/login/) to upgrade to a paid account. After topping up, you are no longer constrained by the Free Plan's per-second call limit; each key remains subject to CU rate and burst limits, as described in the [JSON-RPC documentation](/en/api/json-rpc/#method-policy). Any unused Free Credits stay in your Credits and can still be used. For current rates and billing units, please see the [Pricing page](https://blockvectra.com/en/pricing/).

## Next steps [#next-steps]

* [Browse the datasets directory](https://blockvectra.com/en/data/) to see every dataset BlockVectra indexes.
* [See the free plan and pricing](https://blockvectra.com/en/pricing/#free) to check what your account includes.
* [Log in to the console](https://console.blockvectra.com/en/login/?next=%2Fen%2Fkeys%2F) to create an API key.