Guides
How storage is measured
You are billed for your own data, not the network expansion behind it.
Tessera stores 30 shards across 30 providers so any 10 rebuild the file. That redundancy is real cost. It is Tessera's cost to the hosts, already in the rate. You are billed for logical volume: whole 40 MiB blocks of your own data.
What tessera usage shows
The CLI reports three sizes for the same files:
| Row | Meaning | One 1.7 MB PDF on its own |
|---|---|---|
| logical size | your files' own bytes | 1.70 MiB |
| stored | whole 40 MiB blocks; storage is billed on this column | 40 MiB (1 block) |
| network size | stored × 3: each block becomes 30 pieces of 4 MiB on 30 hosts, any 10 rebuild it; Tessera pays the hosts for this, already in the rate | 120 MiB |
A block is billed whole, so a single small file still fills one. Uploading a folder, or
tessera sync, packs small files into shared blocks. Uploading many small files together is
cheaper than uploading them one at a time.
Downloads are measured from host spend, about every 5 minutes, and billed in 40 MiB blocks at the
live download rate. The account shows egress_billed_blocks and egress_used_bytes (blocks × 40
MiB): the byte count is what you paid for, not the exact bytes the client read.
Days left is an estimate: balance divided by today's storage charge for what you store now. More uploads or downloads shorten it. It is not a promise.
Live rates: tessera rates, or Accounts & billing.