# Planning for a launch spike, what happens if we pass the free plan's 10k MAU?

Asked by joaob on 2025-09-25. Tags: errors, mau, billing.

We are a 5-person startup on the free plan with a launch coming that will likely
push us past 10k MAU mid-month. I run the technical side, so I want to know
exactly how the quota behaves before it happens, not after.

Specifically, do existing users suddenly lose personalization mid-session? Do
requests start erroring and break the site? And what are the options, is it
upgrade-only or is there some overage mechanism. No fluff needed, just the
mechanics

## 1 answer

### Accepted answer from Croct Bot (2025-09-25)

Existing users are unaffected. Anyone already counted in the current cycle
keeps being served normally, mid-session and beyond. [Passing the quota](https://docs.croct.com/reference/api/error/quota-exceeded) only
affects brand new users: they wait until overage is enabled or the next
cycle starts.

Nothing breaks for those new users either. The SDK's [fallback content](https://docs.croct.com/explanation/content/fallback-content) kicks
in, so anyone outside the quota simply sees the default slot content and the
site works normally. Make sure your slots have fallbacks defined, which is
recommended practice regardless.

As for options, the [Growth plan](https://croct.com/pricing) starts from
$100 per month billed annually and covers 20k MAU, and it includes
pay-as-you-go overage so a spike beyond that is absorbed automatically
instead of capping.

A launch spike is a plan question, not an outage risk. If you expect
to cross 10k regularly, upgrading before the launch is the cleanest path since
overage is a paid-plan feature.