Billing + Polar checkout

Quay’s billing runs through Polar.sh as Merchant of Record — they handle tax, invoicing, and chargebacks. Quay’s account portal is a thin UI on top of Polar’s API; no payment data ever lives on Quay’s servers.

Plans

Plan	Price	Devices
Free	$0	1
Pro	$15 / month or $144 / year (-20%)	1
Pro Plus	$30 / month or $288 / year (-20%)	3

Pricing is in USD. Polar handles local currency conversion + applicable VAT / GST at checkout based on your billing address.

Pro vs Free vs Pro Plus comparison →

Checkout flow

1. Click Upgrade in the desktop app or on the marketing site → redirect to payment.uncle-z.com/v1/billing/checkout (Quay’s gateway)
2. The gateway forwards to Polar’s hosted checkout — your card details stay with Polar, never touching Quay
3. After payment, Polar fires a webhook to the gateway → licence server → your licence key + activation token are emailed to you
4. The desktop app picks up the new entitlement on next launch (or you can paste the licence key into Settings → Account immediately)

Manage subscription

The Billing page in the portal lets you:

• Change plan — upgrade Pro → Pro Plus or downgrade. Pro-rated to the current billing cycle. Polar handles the math.
• Switch monthly ↔ yearly — applies on next renewal; current cycle stays on the old term.
• Update payment method — opens Polar’s hosted card-update form; Quay never sees the card data.
• Download invoices — every invoice as PDF, with the Polar-supplied tax breakdown (VAT / GST / sales tax for your jurisdiction).
• Cancel — takes effect at the end of the current billing cycle. No refunds for partial months; this is in the ToS.

Reactivate after cancellation

Cancelled accounts keep the licence active until the cycle ends, then revert to Free. To reactivate within 30 days of expiry: click Reactivate in the portal — same plan, same payment method, no re-checkout. After 30 days, run a fresh checkout.

Receipts + tax

Polar issues invoices with the tax breakdown your jurisdiction requires (EU VAT invoices, UK VAT, Australian GST, etc.). For business purchases that need a VAT ID on the invoice, enter the VAT ID at checkout — Polar will apply reverse-charge where applicable.

For US sales tax: Polar handles per-state nexus + collects where required. Most US individuals see tax-free pricing; some states (WA, etc.) include sales tax automatically.

Refunds

Within 14 days of purchase, no questions asked: email me at zaid.ug@gmail.com with your order ID. I’ll process the refund through Polar (your bank usually credits within 5–10 business days).

After 14 days: case-by-case. Most “I forgot to cancel” requests get a goodwill refund; just ask.

Payment integration architecture

For the curious: Quay’s gateway at payment.uncle-z.com sits between the desktop app and Polar. It exists for three reasons:

1. HMAC signing — Quay never embeds a Polar API key in the desktop binary; the gateway does
2. Account-portal session bridging — turns a Polar customer-id into a Quay account-portal session
3. Vendor-swap insurance — if Polar pricing or features change in some untenable way, swapping the gateway’s downstream is a server-side change, no client redeploy

Payment integration deep-dive → for the full sequence diagram.