Plan limits

Every AlphaHouse plan sets two limits: how many trading systems you may run, and how much leveraged capital you may run. The second confuses almost everybody, because it is not a limit on how much money you may have.

Leveraged capital is gross exposure

Your plan’s cap applies to the total size of the book, long plus short, not to your deposits. Suppose you hold:

	Amount
Account equity	$20,000
Long positions	$19,700
Short positions	$19,000
Leveraged capital used	$38,700

You deposited $20,000 and are consuming $38,700 of your cap, because the strategy is running roughly 1.9x gross on your equity. This is why plans show an approximate account equity band rather than only a cap figure: a cap of $40,000 is not a number you can compare to your bank balance.

The equity band is an estimate, and deliberately conservative

The band is computed at maximum gross leverage. Running below maximum means you hit your cap later, never earlier, so the band can only understate who fits a tier. Your own ratio will differ, and regime scaling moves it around too.

The three gates

The app checks three things in order before letting you add or run a system. The message tells you which one you hit.

1. Do you have an active payment subscription? If not, you may add exactly one system, to trigger checkout. A second gives: “You have a system pending activation. Please complete payment to activate it.”

2. Are you under your system count? “You’ve reached your plan’s limit of N systems. Please upgrade to add more.”

3. Are you under your leveraged capital cap? “You’ve exceeded your leveraged capital limit. Please upgrade your plan or reduce leverage.” This gate blocks adding a system; it does not stop the systems you already run.

What happens when you exceed the cap

We move you to the plan that covers your account. We do not reduce the leverage you chose. A cap breach is a pricing fact, so it gets a pricing response: changing your leverage would change the product you receive, silently, whereas changing your plan is visible, reversible and something you can argue with.

The sequence:

1. A single day over the cap does nothing. Equity moves several percent a day on a levered book, so a brief crossing is ignored.
2. A sustained breach starts a plan change. It has to be over on most of the recent daily runs, not once.
3. You get at least 14 days’ notice, and the change takes effect no earlier than your next renewal. Settings and the dashboard’s tier usage card name the plan and the date once it is scheduled.
4. You can stop it by bringing usage below the cap, or by choosing a plan yourself, before that date.

Downgrades work the same way in reverse, and are automatic: if your account settles back down, we move you back at a later renewal without being asked. We will not move you below the plan you originally chose — only ever back down to it.

If no plan covers your account, we contact you rather than changing anything automatically.

This is not regime scaling, which changes your exposure and leaves both your setting and your plan alone.

You can cross the cap without doing anything

Your leveraged capital moves with your account: if your equity grows, gross exposure grows with it at the same leverage. You can cross your cap purely by having a good month. Watch the tier usage card, which warns you above 80% usage, well before anything is scheduled.

Staying on your current plan

All three of these work, and all three have to happen before the effective date on the notice.

Reduce your leverage yourself. The most direct fix, and it keeps you in control of the number. Note this is something you choose to do — we do not do it for you.

Withdraw capital. Reduces equity, and gross exposure with it.

Or accept the change, if the larger plan genuinely fits your account. You can also move plans yourself at any time from billing settings, which every warning links to.

Which plan fits

Work from your account equity and read the band on each plan card. The bands are contiguous, so a given equity figure maps to exactly one tier.

Two things the plans deliberately do not vary: there is no performance fee on any plan, and there is no lock-in, so you can cancel at any time.

The top tier is not sold through the app and is arranged by conversation.

Related

• Settings and billing to see and change all of this.
• Leverage, the setting the cap constrains.
• FAQ for pricing, including the fee-back promise.