Manage seats and guests

On paid plans you pay per billable seat, not per name in the member list. The difference matters because guests, agents, and pending invitations are all treated differently.

How billable seats are counted

Billable seats are your organization’s members minus a free guest allowance, with a minimum of one seat:

billable seats = members, minus free guest seats used, minimum 1

Each plan includes a number of guest seats free of charge:

Plan	Free guest seats
Free	0
Starter	2
Pro	2
Business	5
Enterprise and Enterprise+	10

Guests within the allowance cost nothing. Guests beyond it count as normal billable seats. So a Pro organization with 8 members, of whom 3 are Guests, pays for 6 seats: 8 members, minus 2 free guest seats (the third guest is billable).

Agents are never billed

AI agent personas that appear in your People list when you connect an external agent are not human seats and are excluded from the seat count entirely. Connect as many agents as your plan’s connection limits allow without affecting your bill.

Invitations and timing

Inviting someone does not consume a seat. The seat is counted when the invitation is accepted and the person actually joins. You can send invitations ahead of an onboarding wave without paying for empty seats in the meantime; your subscription quantity adjusts automatically as people join and leave.

If you bought through the Microsoft commercial marketplace, seats are prepaid instead and do not adjust on their own. See Microsoft Marketplace exception below.

When seat changes are billed

Adding people is billed the same day. When someone joins through an invitation, or an admin changes a role so that a new seat becomes billable, the prorated amount for the rest of the current period is invoiced and charged straight away. Your regular renewal then stays at members times the seat price, with no surprise carried forward.

Two other cases settle at renewal instead:

• Removing seats produces prorated account credit against your next invoice, not a refund to your card.
• Directory-driven additions, such as SCIM provisioning or accounts created automatically at single sign-on, are prorated onto the next invoice rather than charged per person on the spot. A renewal that follows such additions is larger than members times the seat price, because it carries the base amount plus those prorations.

You do not have to wait for an invoice to see any of this:

• The Billing tab shows Estimated next charge, with the date it settles and, when mid-cycle changes are pending, a separate line for how much of the estimate they contribute. The figure is Stripe’s own upcoming-invoice calculation, so it always matches what is actually billed.
• Organization owners receive an email whenever the billed seat count changes, stating the new count, whether the change was charged today or will settle at renewal, and the estimated next invoice. Bulk membership syncs send at most one email per hour with the running total rather than one per person.

Plan upgrades are likewise charged the same day; downgrades settle at renewal. See Change your plan or billing cycle.

Microsoft Marketplace exception

Everything above describes paying Onplana directly by card, where seats follow your membership. If your subscription was purchased through the Microsoft commercial marketplace, seats work the opposite way round: they are prepaid, and the count you bought is an allowance rather than a running total.

The practical differences:

• Adding people does not change your bill. You are filling an allowance you have already paid for, so there is no same-day proration and no charge per person.
• To grow, raise the seat count at Microsoft, not by inviting. Sign in to the Microsoft Admin Center, open the onplana subscription under Billing → Your products, and increase the quantity. Onplana picks the new allowance up from Microsoft within a few seconds.
• Removing people frees the seat but produces no credit here. Onplana never charges you directly for a Marketplace subscription, so the prorated credit described above has nothing to apply to. Billing changes are settled on your Microsoft invoice.
• Going over your seat count removes nobody. It is a prompt to buy more seats, not an enforcement that locks people out.

Full purchase and attachment flow: Buy through Microsoft Marketplace.

Note

The counting rules earlier on this page still apply either way. Agents are never seats, and an invitation only counts once it is accepted. It is the billing that differs, not what Onplana considers a seat.

The seat cost is stated before you commit

Every gesture that can move a seat now says so at the moment you make it, not on the next invoice:

• Invite dialogs (the People page, and a project’s Add Members dialog when the list includes someone new to the organization) show a line under the role choice: within the free guest allowance, a billable seat with the per-seat price, or that the member limit is reached.
• Changing a member’s role across the Guest boundary shows the billing consequence inside the confirmation dialog. This is often no change, stated in as many words: seats are billed as members minus the guests covered by your free allowance, so in an organization holding more guests than its allowance, flipping one of them to Member moves no money at all; they were billed like a member already. The bill only moves when a flip crosses the allowance boundary. Role changes that stay on one side of the boundary, such as Member to Portfolio Manager, never affect billing and show no line.
• When an invitation’s acceptance creates a new membership, every Owner and Admin gets a notification and an email naming who joined, at which seat, and through which invitation, so a seat never appears silently. These arrive regardless of notification preferences, the same as other billing events.

See your seat breakdown

1. Open Organization Settings and go to the Billing tab.

2. The subscription card shows the full breakdown: total members, how many are guests, how much of the free guest allowance is used, and the resulting billable seat count.

3. Below the seat math, Estimated next charge shows what the next invoice comes to and when it settles, including any pending prorations from seat or plan changes made this period.

Tip

If your bill looks higher than expected, check the guest count first. A “guest” who was invited as a Member counts as a full seat; their organization role is what matters, not how external they feel. Roles are explained in Invite your team.

FAQs

Do AI tokens come with seats? Every plan includes a one-time AI token bonus sized by tier and paid seats, and you can buy prepaid credit on top. The full mechanics live in Understand your AI token budget.

What exactly is a Guest? An organization role for external collaborators: they only see projects they are explicitly added to and have no organization-wide access. Assign it when inviting, or change a member’s role later from the People page.

Can I buy a single seat on a paid plan? Yes. There is no seat minimum beyond one, so a one-person organization can subscribe to Starter, Pro, Business or Enterprise and pay for exactly one seat. You do not need a team to buy a paid plan, and no tier requires a larger commitment. Pick the plan by the features you want, not by headcount, and add people later if you need them.

Can I buy one Enterprise seat? Yes. Enterprise is available as a single seat at the published per-seat price, and everything in the tier, including SSO, audit logs and governance, is included at that size.

Enterprise+ is the one exception. It is not self-serve at any seat count and is arranged by talking to us, so it has no published price on the pricing page.

Can an organization ever bill zero seats? No. The billable count has a floor of one seat, even if every member is a guest within the free allowance.

Does removing a member lower the bill immediately? The seat count and subscription quantity update as soon as the member is removed. The unused time you already paid for comes back as prorated account credit on your next invoice; it is not refunded to your card.

Why was my renewal invoice larger than members times the seat price? Seats added by a directory sync (SCIM or single sign-on) during the period are prorated onto the renewal invoice rather than charged when they were added, and renewals from before same-day charging can carry older prorations too. The Billing tab’s Estimated next charge line shows the figure ahead of time, and the pending-changes line beneath it shows exactly how much of it comes from mid-cycle changes. Seats added through invitations are charged the same day, so they never inflate a renewal.

Best practices

1. Audit guest count quarterly. Guests-billed-as-members is the most common bill-surprise source.
2. Use the free guest allowance for external clients. Most teams under-use it. 2 free guests on Pro covers most consulting patterns.
3. Pre-invite onboarding cohorts. Invites don’t consume seats until accepted. Send all at once.
4. Document why each external user is a guest, not a member. The boundary matters for SCIM/lifecycle.
5. Cite the agent-exclusion to finance. Agents are not billable seats. “We added 5 AI agents” doesn’t change the bill.

Troubleshooting / common pitfalls

• Bill higher than expected. Check guest count vs allowance. Guests beyond allowance bill as members.
• External user “feels” like a guest but bills as member. Their role is Member, not Guest. Change role on People page.
• Agent appears in seat count. Should never happen; agents are never billable seats. File a bug.
• Invitation accepted but seat not added. Cache; refresh.
• Removed member, bill unchanged. Mid-cycle prorating. The credit lands on the next invoice; the Estimated next charge line on the Billing tab already reflects it.
• Renewal invoice higher than the usual monthly total. Directory- synced additions prorate onto it. The Billing tab showed the estimate in advance, and owners were emailed when the seat count changed.
• Charged the day someone joined. That is the prorated amount for the new seat, so the renewal stays at the usual total. The owner email sent at the time says exactly this.

How this combines with other features

• Seats + Plan. Plan determines free guest allowance. See Compare plans and upgrade.
• Seats + AI tokens. Bonus sized by tier × paid seats. See Understand your AI token budget.
• Seats + Roles. Guest role is the billable-distinct role. See Understand roles and permissions.
• Seats + SCIM. Deactivation is per- org. Deactivated members don’t bill. See Provision users with SCIM.

Coming from another tool

Tool	Mapping
Microsoft Project Plan per-seat	Direct concept
Atlassian Jira Cloud per-seat	Direct
Asana per-seat	Direct
ClickUp per-seat	Direct
Custom per-seat licensing	Standard pattern

Related

• Compare plans and upgrade, plan affects guest allowance
• Buy through Microsoft Marketplace, where seats are prepaid instead
• Understand your AI token budget, bonus scales with seats
• Understand roles and permissions, Guest role detail