Echo
What Echo costs, and the cap
X charges for every post Echo reads, so Echo counts reads, and its cap is a number of reads. Budget & settings shows how many have been used this month, what you have been billed, what the month is tracking toward, and what you pay per read. The rate is set by VeraGen, not by the project.
In your usage, Echo’s reads appear as Echo — collecting mentions from X, Echo — collecting replies from X, Echo — collecting quotes from X and Echo — keeping captured posts in step with X.
Set the cap
An account owner or admin sets these under Budget & settings, per project:
| Monthly read cap | The most reads this project may use in a month. Leave it empty for no cap; 0 captures nothing. |
|---|---|
| When the cap is reached | Pause capture, or Keep going and notify me. |
| Warn me at | A percentage of the cap (80 unless changed). When a project reaches it, the account’s owners and admins are emailed, once a month. |
Set the cap before adding a source: it is what stops an unexpectedly busy account running up a bill. Each project has its own cap.
The cost of holding the lease
Echo re-checks every post it holds with X about once a day, so that posts deleted on X disappear from Echo too. That is roughly one read per stored post per day — about 30 reads a month for each post you hold, before anything new is captured. A project holding 500 posts uses around 15,000 reads a month on this alone. Leave room for it in the cap, or capture pauses while you are still expecting new posts.
Re-checks carry on when the cap is reached, because X requires deleted posts to leave Echo within 24 hours. A project at its cap can therefore go over it by the cost of re-checking the posts it already holds; nothing new is captured.
Signed in to VeraGen? Press Guide me on any screen for a walkthrough, or ask Odin.