gagarinDocuments

Referrals

In force from 3 October 2026. Invite someone, and you both get credit. These are the rules, including the ones that are not in your favour. They are part of the terms of service.

Who can invite

An account that has topped up at least once with real money. The $5 every account starts with, credit we added by hand, and referral credit itself do not count. Until you have paid, you have no link and the console does not show one. Your link, and the code in it, is on the billing page of the console once you do.

What each side gets

  • The person you invite gets their first top-up matched, up to $50. Top up $20 and $20 is added; $50, $50; $100, $50. Only the first top-up is matched.
  • You get 15% of every top-up they make during their first three months, as credit on your balance.

Only real top-ups count, for both sides. Signup credit, credit we add by hand and referral credit never earn or trigger anything.

Credit, not cash

Referral credit is credit on your gagarin balance. It spends on running things like any other credit. It cannot be paid out, withdrawn, refunded as money, or moved to another account.

The three months

The window is measured from the day the invited account signed up, not from their first top-up, and it is fixed then. A top-up made after it ends earns you nothing, though the match on their first top-up does not depend on it.

Only at sign-up

A referral is made when an account is created, through your link or code and nowhere else. It cannot be added afterwards, to an account that already exists, or by either of us asking. If someone follows your link more than once or follows several people’s, the last one before they sign up is the one that counts. An account cannot invite itself.

Refunds and chargebacks

If a top-up is refunded, the referral credit that top-up earned is taken back in the same proportion: a full refund removes all of it, a half refund half. If it is disputed with the card issuer, all of it is taken back at once. This applies to the match on the person you invited and to your 15%.

Abuse

Referrals exist to bring in people who will use gagarin. Inviting accounts you control, creating accounts to collect the match, or anything else that looks like paying ourselves, may void the referral and take back the credit it earned, and we may close accounts that do it. A voided referral earns nothing from then on.

What the person who invited you can see

If you signed up through someone’s link, they can see in their console:

  • your GitHub login, or, if you signed up another way, your email address with most of it hidden (j***@gmail.com);
  • the date you signed up;
  • your total top-ups, and what they have earned from them.

That is all. They cannot see your projects, services, balance, or full email address. Likewise you are never told who invited you.

We may change this

We may change the rates, the window or the match, or end the programme, at any time. Credit you have already earned stays on your balance; what changes is what later top-ups earn. Everything not covered here is in the terms of service.