Members and seats

A workspace is billed per seat. This article defines exactly which people occupy a paid seat, which do not, and how the seat count on a workspace’s subscription changes.

Seat occupants

A seat is occupied by a distinct person, not by a row on a page. The same person is billed once even if they qualify for a seat in more than one way below.

Who	Occupies a seat
Workspace member with role Owner, Admin, or Member	Yes
Workspace member with role Guest	No
Project collaborator (added to a project, whether or not they belong to the workspace)	Yes
Document-share guest (given access to a single document, no project access)	No
Link viewer (access via an “anyone with the link” document link, no project access)	No
Pending invitation (invited but not yet accepted)	No

Workspace members

A workspace member has a role of Owner, Admin, Member, or Guest.
Members with the Owner, Admin, or Member role each occupy one seat.
A member with the Guest role does not occupy a seat.

Project collaborators

Being added to any project in the workspace occupies a seat, whether or not that person is also a workspace member.
A person who has project access but no workspace membership is billed the same as a workspace member; project-level access alone is enough to occupy a seat.

A person who is given access to one document, without being added to that document’s project, does not occupy a seat.
A person who opens a document through an “anyone with the link” link, without being added to that document’s project, does not occupy a seat.
If either of these people is later added to the document’s project (or to the workspace), they then occupy a seat under the rules above.

Pending invitations

An invitation that has not yet been accepted does not occupy a seat.

Seat count

The seat count is the number of distinct people who occupy a seat under the rules above: non-Guest workspace members, plus any additional people who hold project access but are not already counted as a workspace member.
The seat count has a floor of 1, even if a workspace currently has zero qualifying people.
The count shown on the billing page lists each occupant once, labeled by how they occupy the seat: through workspace membership, or through project access without workspace membership.

How the count changes

The seat count is recalculated whenever workspace membership or project membership changes (for example, adding or removing a person from the workspace or from a project).
If the recalculated count is higher than the subscription’s current seat quantity, the subscription’s quantity is increased and the added seat is invoiced and charged immediately, unless the workspace is still within its trial period.
If the recalculated count is lower, the subscription’s quantity is decreased and the removed seat is credited toward the next invoice rather than refunded immediately.
If the seat count already matches the subscription’s stored quantity, no change is made and no proration is created.
A subscription that is not yet started is not affected by seat-count changes; the seat count only applies once a subscription exists.
When a subscription starts, its initial seat quantity is set to the current seat count at that moment.

Automatic reconciliation

Every workspace with an active subscription has its seat quantity reconciled against its actual seat count once per hour.
This reconciliation runs automatically in the background and requires no action; it exists to correct the seat quantity if an earlier update was missed.