Billing cycles

How RACEMAP billing cycles work: a cycle is 7 whole days counted in UTC — not your local time. Understand why an event can occasionally cross into a second cycle, and how to avoid it.

Live tracking is billed per event cycle. This page explains exactly how a cycle is measured so you can predict your costs — and understand why, occasionally, one event is billed as two cycles.

For current prices and plans, see the RACEMAP pricing page. This page explains the timing behind those prices.

How a billing cycle works

A billing cycle is 7 days, and it starts when your event first goes live. Once started, a cycle is billed once — no matter how many of those 7 days the event is actually active.

Two details decide how many cycles an event costs:

• Days are counted in whole UTC calendar days. Every day your event is active is recorded against a UTC calendar date (YYYY-MM-DD in UTC).

• The cycle is anchored to the first UTC day your event is active. It then covers that day plus the following 6 UTC days (7 dates in total). Any activity on an 8th UTC date starts a new cycle.

Why UTC — and not your local time

This is the part that surprises people. The day boundary that matters for billing is 00:00 UTC, not midnight in your local timezone.

Because of the timezone offset, your local clock and the UTC date can disagree. For an organizer in a UTC+10 timezone, a race that starts at 09:00 local time starts at 23:00 UTC the previous day. So the very first UTC date of the event gets only ~1 hour of activity — but it still counts as a full UTC date of the cycle.

For short, single-day events this is invisible: the event simply spans one or two UTC dates, comfortably inside one 7-day cycle, and is billed once.

It only matters for long events that run close to the full 7 days.

The same event duration can cost one or two cycles, depending on its start time relative to 00:00 UTC.

Worked example: the same event, two outcomes

Consider a single event that is active for 6 days and 13 hours — comfortably less than 7 days.

• Starts at 00:00 UTC → it ends midday on day N+6, touching 7 UTC dates (day N through N+6). That fits in one cycle → 1 cycle billed.

• Starts at 23:00 UTC → the first UTC date gets only ~1 hour of activity, and the event ends midday on day N+7, touching 8 UTC dates (day N through N+7). The 8th date falls outside the first cycle → 2 cycles billed.

The event is exactly the same length in both cases. The only difference is the start time relative to 00:00 UTC.

It is not about your local time, and not about the number of hours. Cycles are counted in whole UTC calendar dates. A long event that begins shortly before 00:00 UTC "spends" a whole UTC date on a sliver of activity, which can push its tail into a second cycle.

How to avoid an unexpected second cycle

• For multi-day events approaching 7 days, check the start time in UTC, not local time.

• Avoid starting an activation shortly before 00:00 UTC — that wastes almost a whole UTC date and brings the end of your 7-day window forward by a day.

• Remember the cycle is anchored to the first activation. A test or preview activation days before the event can start the clock early; keep it in mind for long events.

• To avoid accidental usage (and cost) after your event finishes, see Auto-pausation.

See also

• RACEMAP pricing page — current prices, plans and add-ons (the source of truth for amounts).

• Auto-pausation — how RACEMAP pauses the Data API after an event to prevent unexpected costs.