If you have an Area Under Management (AUM) subscription and your usage jumped well past the area you expected, the most common cause is ordering full PlanetScope® scenes through the Orders API without the clip tool. This article explains why that happens, how to keep usage within your area of interest (AOI), and what to check if you clipped your order but were still charged the full scene.

How AUM quota is consumed

An AUM subscription gives you access to archive and new PlanetScope imagery over the areas you manage, measured in square kilometers. Quota is consumed by the area of the imagery you order and deliver, not by the size of the AOI you intend to cover. When you order an item without clipping it, the full footprint of that scene counts against your quota.

A single PlanetScope scene covers a large area. A SuperDove™ scene, for example, is roughly 32.5 km by 19.6 km, or about 637 square kilometers. Ordering five unclipped scenes can therefore consume several thousand square kilometers, even when the AOI is only a fraction of one scene. This is how a small AOI can show usage far above 100%.

Why an unclipped order counts the whole scene

The Orders API delivers complete scenes by default. The clip tool is what restricts delivery, and quota consumption, to your AOI. If you submit a PlanetScope (PSScene) order without including the clip tool, each item is delivered at its full footprint and the full footprint is charged.

Clipping to your AOI counts only the clipped area against quota. For details on how each tool affects consumption, see the related articles below.

How to keep usage within your AOI

1. Include the clip tool in every order, with your AOI geometry as the clip geometry. This restricts both delivery and quota consumption to your AOI.
2. Estimate consumption before you order. The Quota Reservations API can preview how much quota an order will use before you commit to it.
3. Use the Subscriptions API for recurring AOI-managed delivery. A subscription tied to your AOI delivers ongoing imagery clipped to that area, which is a good fit for monitoring workflows.
4. Deliver clipped outputs to your destination of choice. Clipped imagery can be delivered to cloud destinations, including Google Earth Engine, the same way full-scene orders are.

How to confirm the clip tool is applied to an order

Before you place an order, check that the clip tool is present in the request and that its geometry matches your AOI. In the Orders API, the clip tool is an entry in the order's tools array, and for scenes it takes a GeoJSON aoi geometry:

"tools": [
  {
    "clip": {
      "aoi": { "type": "Polygon", "coordinates": [ ... ] }
    }
  }
]

Two signs confirm that clipping took effect on the delivered order:

• The delivered file names have _clip appended. If the AOI is large enough that the full scene falls inside it, the suffix can be omitted, but for a small AOI the clipped files are named this way.
• The item metadata reflects the clipped footprint rather than the full scene.

If you order through Planet Explorer rather than the API, choose the clipping option when you build the order. See How to place an order with clipping in Planet Explorer.

If you clipped but were still charged the full scene footprint

If you included the clip tool and still see the full footprint charged against your quota, check the following before contacting Support:

• The clip tool was in the payload of every order. When several orders are submitted together, or through a script, it is common for the clip tool to be present on some orders and missing on others. Confirm it is in each one.
• The same scene was ordered more than once. Re-ordering the same item during testing charges the clipped area again for each order. Duplicate or mixed-date orders can add up quickly.
• The geometry is a valid clip AOI. The clip tool rejects geometries such as polygons with holes, multiple exterior rings, or shapes over 1,500 vertices, and it cannot clip outside your contractual area of access. An order that fails to clip may still deliver the full scene.
• The charge matches full footprints, not the clipped area. Compare the quota consumed against the scene footprint size. A charge that is a multiple of the full scene footprint points to unclipped or duplicated delivery.

If the orders were clipped correctly and the charge still does not match the clipped area, this may need a manual review. Pause further ordering and contact Support with the details below.

If you have already exceeded your quota

If an unintended full-scene order has consumed your quota, pause further ordering and contact Planet Support. Include your subscription ID, the order IDs, and the item IDs so the team can review what was delivered. Quota adjustments are handled case by case and are not guaranteed, so the most reliable safeguard is to clip every order from the start.

Related documentation

For the full detail behind this summary, see the Planet documentation:

• Orders API tools for the clip tool and how to add it to an order.
• Quota Reservations API for estimating and reserving quota before you order.
• Orders API mechanics for how orders are built and delivered.