Billing & Seats

How Brief's plans, seats, and billing work — upgrading your workspace, inviting teammates with clear cost previews, proration, billing periods, and promo codes.

Last updated: July 5, 2026

Brief uses simple seat-based billing: your workspace pays for the seats it purchases, and everything about adding or removing people shows you the cost before anything is charged. This page covers plans, seats, billing periods, and promo codes.

Plans at a Glance

  • Free — every workspace starts here, with a monthly usage allowance per member. No credit card required.
  • Pro — a personal plan with a larger monthly allowance, billed per seat.
  • Team — a workspace plan billed per seat with a pooled usage allowance that scales with your seat count. Team plans have a 5-seat minimum.
  • Enterprise — a custom contract for larger organizations. Contact us to talk through your needs.

Pricing is shown in the app on the upgrade page and at checkout — current per-seat prices always live there, so we don't repeat them here.

Upgrading Your Workspace

  1. Go to Settings → Billing and choose a plan, or visit the upgrade page directly.
  2. You're taken to a secure Stripe checkout. For Team plans, the seat count is pre-filled from your current member count (minimum 5) and you can adjust it before paying.
  3. After payment, you're returned to your billing settings with the plan active.

Only a workspace admin can purchase a Team plan. The admin who completes the purchase becomes the billing owner for the workspace.

Seats: Purchased vs Used

A seat is used by an active member or a pending invitation — invites hold a seat until they're accepted or revoked.

Admins see a plan banner on the Members page showing your plan, how many seats you've purchased, and how many are in use, along with your renewal date. The Billing settings page shows the same seat summary.

Inviting Teammates

When you invite people from the Members page:

  1. Enter one or more email addresses and choose a role.
  2. If the invites need more seats than you've purchased, Brief shows a cost preview — the prorated charge for the added seats and your new monthly total.
  3. You confirm, the charge is applied, and only then are the invitations sent.
The charge always happens before invitations go out. If payment fails, no invitations are sent — you can simply try again.

Assigning the admin role to teammates requires a Team plan.

Removing Members and Proration

Changing an existing member's role or removing them from the workspace requires a Team plan — on Free, membership is invite-only and roles and removal aren't available until you upgrade.

When you remove a member, the confirmation dialog shows a proration preview — the credit applied to your subscription for the unused portion of that seat's billing period. Seat counts update automatically, and pending invitations you revoke free their seats the same way.

Billing Periods

Your billing period is anchored to the day you joined or upgraded — not the calendar month. If you signed up on the 17th, your usage allowance resets on the 17th of every month. Your current period's end date is shown on the Billing settings page.

Managing Your Subscription

From Settings → Billing, choose Manage Billing to open the secure Stripe customer portal, where you can:

  • Update your payment method
  • View and download invoices
  • Change or cancel your subscription

For workspace plans, the billing owner manages the subscription.

Promo Codes

If you have a promo code, apply it through either link:

  • New to Brief: briefhq.ai/sign-up?promo=YOURCODE — the code is carried through sign-up, and after you create your account you land on the upgrade page with the discount already applied.
  • Existing account: briefhq.ai/upgrade?promo=YOURCODE — the discount is applied through checkout.
Your promo code stays saved on your account even if you don't check out right away — you can come back and upgrade later without losing the discount.

An invalid or expired code never blocks sign-up; you'll simply see standard pricing.

Common Questions

Do pending invitations cost a seat? Yes — a pending invite reserves a seat until it's accepted or revoked. Revoking an invite frees the seat.

Who can manage billing? Any team member can invite people to the workspace. Only admins can change roles, remove members, and see the seat usage banner; the billing owner (the admin who purchased the plan) manages the subscription in the Stripe portal.

What happens to usage limits on a Team plan? Your workspace's pooled usage allowance scales with the number of seats you've purchased, and resets each billing period.

What's Next