Cloud pricing term
What is an always-on minimum?
An always-on minimum is the smallest continuously allocated instance, replica, or spend floor that remains even when user traffic is zero.
The expensive mistake
Calling a service pay-per-use while leaving one minimum instance running, or treating included usage as a free tier with no payment. A minimum can be technical, such as one idle replica, or contractual, such as Railway Hobby's monthly minimum with the same amount of usage included.
Where it appears on your bill
It can appear as idle CPU and memory duration, provisioned capacity, minimum replicas, or a plan minimum that usage credits offset but do not remove.
Worked example
The dated example uses Railway Hobby's $5 monthly minimum with $5 of usage included. If measured resource usage is $2, the bill is still $5, not $2. If usage is $8, Railway says the customer is charged total usage, so the result is $8, not $13.
Example prices checked: