Understand usage
Workato measures how much you use each capability, and converts that usage into Workato credits. This page covers the rules that apply to every capability and the pages that follow explain each individual metric in detail.
Some plans measure usage differently. Refer to your contract or contact your Customer Success Representative for more information.
How usage is calculated
Workato calculates usage using two principles: Only successful operations count, and usage accumulates across capabilities.
Only successful operations count
Workato bills for operations it completes successfully on your behalf. As a general rule:
- Skipped operations don't count: Steps that don't run (for example, because a conditional or control step routed around them) aren't counted.
- Failed operations and canceled jobs are excluded: Operations that fail don't count. Operations that complete successfully before a job fails or is canceled do count.
- Rerun-eligible operations count: An operation that runs again as part of a rerun contributes to usage.
- Expected errors still count: An operation that returns an expected error response (such as a
4xxor5xx) and otherwise completes as intended counts as successful.
Individual capabilities add their own specifics on top of these rules. Refer to each asset's page for more information.
Usage accumulates across capabilities
The following rules determine how usage is calculated when your workload uses multiple capabilities:
- Some usage is additive: Certain capabilities are measured in addition to the primary usage of the asset they run in. For example, when a recipe processes a document with IDP (Intelligent Document Processing), the pages it processes are counted on top of the recipe's own usage. They add to it, rather than replacing it.
- Usage is counted only once: An operation that's already counted in one metric isn't counted again in another. For example, an IDP step is counted as Pages, so it is not also counted as a workflow step.
A combined workload's total usage is the sum of each capability's usage. Additive capabilities stack on top of that total, and no operation is counted twice. Refer to Estimate usage for complete worked examples.
Usage metrics
The following table lists each Workato asset, the metric used to measure its usage, and how that usage is calculated.
| Asset | Metric | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Workflow recipes | Tasks | Measured per action step executed in a workflow recipe job. The total Tasks for a job is the sum of all eligible action steps. |
| Managed API | API Calls | Measured per successful API request to a Managed API. Longer response times can count as more than one API Call. Internal recipe steps do not add to API Calls. |
| API Proxy | API Proxy Calls | Measured per successful API request to an API Proxy (with or without transformation). Each request counts as one API Proxy Call, regardless of response time. |
| Data pipelines | Rows | Measured per row extracted from the source across successful objects in each data pipeline sync. |
| Genies | Genie actions | Measured per prompt sent to a Genie. Prompts can be sent by users or systems, such as another Genie or an app event. |
| Skills | Tasks | Non-billable when invoked by a Genie (included in the Genie action). Billed as Tasks when invoked over MCP. |
| MCP | Varies | MCP usage is measured as the usage of the asset it invokes. |
| MCP proxy | MCP Proxy Calls | Measured per successful request a Workato proxy MCP server routes to an external third-party MCP server. |
| IDP | Pages | Measured per page processed, whether the page is standalone or part of a larger document. IDP usage is added on top of the usage of the asset it runs in. |
| Event streams | Events | Measured per message published, whether individually or as part of a batch. Consumed messages don't count. Event streams usage is added on top of the usage of the asset it runs in. |
| Workato GO | Seats | Measured by the number of seats assigned to end-users of Workato GO. Any assets invoked by Workato GO are measured separately, following their own usage metric. |
| Workflow apps | Seats | Measured by the number of seats assigned to end-users of Workflow apps. Any assets invoked by a Workflow app are measured separately, following their own usage metric. |
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