Documentation

💰 Budget and Submission Availability

During the onboarding process of your challenge, we will discuss the estimated compute and storage budget. We generally work with two types of invoices:

  • Prepaid Invoice: Covers the base cost of your challenge along with a minimal estimate for storage and compute.
  • Postpaid Invoice: Covers any additional costs incurred beyond the prepaid estimate. These may result from increased participation, higher GPU usage, or additional test data.

📬 Budget Alerts

To help you stay on top of your spending, you will receive automatic budget alerts when your usage hits:

  • 70%
  • 90%
  • 100% of your total budget

If you'd like to set custom alert levels, please contact us at support@grand-challenge.org.

These alerts give you the opportunity to proactively:

  • Monitor your challenge usage
  • Take action to avoid interruptions, either by:

🚫 What Happens If You Run Out of Budget?

If your challenge exceeds its total budget:

  • All submissions will be disabled across all phases
  • You will not be able to test your own submissions either
  • Both you and the Grand Challenge support team will be notified

We will try to resolve the issue as quickly as possible, but please note:

🕒 Our team is only available during Dutch office hours (Mon–Fri, 08:00–17:00 CEST)

⚠️ Final Deadline Considerations

For most challenges, submission activity peaks during the final hours before the challenge closes. As a result, compute costs may spike quickly toward the end.

We strongly advise:

  • Taking this surge into account when setting your budget
  • Avoiding deadlines after 17:00 CEST on Fridays, as support will be unavailable until the following Monday

Planning ahead ensures a smooth experience for both participants and organizers.