# Consuming Robot Units

> Robot units allow you to configure VPN Gateway and to use one or both types of cloud robots, but they consume robot units differently.

Robot units allow you to configure VPN Gateway and to use one or both types of cloud robots, but they consume robot units differently.

:::important
You can configure a maximum of five VPN Gateways for your organization. Robot Units will not be consumed to configure or maintain the VPN Gateway.
:::

## Automation Cloud™ Robots - VM

### Robot units consumption

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     Feature  
     Testing - consumed amount <sup> 1 </sup> 
     Production - consumed amount  
     Details  
  
 
 
  
    Automation Cloud&trade; Robots - VM 
    By machine size:
      
          Small - 2,000  
          Standard - 3,000  
          Medium - 5,500  
          Large - 9,000  
      
By cost profile: Selecting Fast or Always cost profiles adds extra RUs to the existing consumption rate: 
      
         Fast - adds 500 RUs/month  
         Always - adds 1,000 RUs/month  
      

    By machine size:
      
          Small - 5,000  
          Standard - 6,000  
          Medium - 7,500  
          Large - 10,000  
      
By cost profile: Selecting Fast or Always cost profiles adds extra RUs to the existing consumption rate: 
      
         Fast - adds 500 RUs/month  
         Always - adds 1,000 RUs/month  
      

    Consumption : Robot units are consumed from the tenant's annual available RUs, shortly after it is created. Additional costs : A licensed machine can run as long as needed with no additional RU consumption. Reserved RUs : The required amount of RUs to be consumed by each Cloud Robot - VM machine is reserved per month, at the turn of each month.  
  
 

<sup>1</sup> You must be on the **Enterprise**,**Pro**, or **Pro Trial** licensing plan to use this feature.

Robot Units are consumed from the tenant allocation and do not automatically fall back to organization-level pools.

If a tenant does not have enough available RUs for Cloud Robots - VM, affected machines may become unavailable and new machines cannot be created until additional RUs are allocated to the tenant.

### Robot units reserve

Once you create an Automation Cloud™ Robots - VM, the required robot units are consumed. To ensure continous operation throughout the months, we keep track of how many robot units your cloud machines need for the next month, and we internally reserve them. At the beginning of each billing month, we automatically deduct the necessary robot units for your existing VMs from the monthly robot unit pool.

For this reason, you could find that the robot unit amount for a tenant can be lower than you would expect at the start of the month.

For example, consider a tenant with an allocation of 30,000 robot units. If this tenant maintains three VM standard machines as of May 31st, each requiring 6,000 robot units, then on June 1st, a total of 18,000 robot units (3 machines x 6,000 robot units/machine) is automatically deducted from your tenant. This results in an available balance of 12,000 robot units for June.

### VM deletion

Deletion of an Automation Cloud™ Robots - VM machine during the month does not refund the robot units consumed to create it. However, for the rest of that month, you can create another similar VM machine without using any extra robot units. Once robot units are used, they allow one VM machine to run for the entire month, and are not bound to a specific instance.

To lower the monthly robot unit usage for your current virtual machines, you can delete a VM before the current month ends. This prevents the reservation and subsequent consumption of robot units for that machine from the following month allocation.

## Automation Cloud Robots - Serverless

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     Feature  
     Testing - consumed amount <sup> 1 </sup> 
     Production - consumed amount  
     Details  
  
 
 
  
    Automation Cloud&trade; Robots - Serverless 
    <code>X</code> RUs / minute that a job runs
      
         Small: 0.5 RU 
         Standard: 1 RUs 
         Medium: 2 RUs 
         Large: 5 RUs 
      

    <code>X</code> RUs / minute that a job runs
      
         Small: 1 RU 
         Standard: 2 RUs 
         Medium: 4 RUs 
         Large: 10 RUs 
      

    Cost : For every minute that a job runs, <code>X</code> RUs are consumed from the tenant's available RUs for the year. The value of <code>X</code> depends on the machine size. Consumption : The RUs are deducted from either a user's own RU pool (if granted by their license for the execution scenario) or from the tenant's available RUs. As an exception, after the user RU pool is depleted, user-run automations may consume RUs from the tenant pool, if available. The RUs are deducted after the job completes. Reserved RUs : For Serverless, RUs are not reserved, so the tenant pool must include sufficient available RUs to run jobs.  
  
 

<sup>1</sup> You must be on the **Enterprise**,**Pro**, or **Pro Trial** licensing plan to use this feature.

Automation Cloud Robots - Serverless jobs require available RUs in the tenant pool at runtime.

If the tenant does not have sufficient available RUs, new serverless jobs cannot start until additional RUs become available.

Serverless Robot Units are consumed dynamically during job execution and are not reserved in advance.

:::note
When running Apps or Action Apps built in Studio Web, small and standard serverless machine sizes do not consume Robot Units. Medium and large machine sizes consume Robot Units at the rates listed in the table above.
:::