The tier is not the scarce thing. Concurrently running slots are.

I am on Pro and I sit under the same cpu-basic ceiling you do. Pro raised my ZeroGPU quota, it did not buy me a single extra cpu-basic slot. Back when I had 6 cpu-basic Spaces, the 4th one to wake while 3 were already running went PAUSED with "Quota exceeded for flavor cpu-basic". That reads like a build failure and it is not one.

The part that made it livable: a sleeping Space does not hold a slot. Two of my three are SLEEPING right now, hardware.current null, and they wake when someone opens them. So the ceiling only bites when several are awake at the same moment, which for most demos is never.

What actually fixed it was consolidation. I had 4 separate demos, folded them into one Space with tabs, and the slot problem stopped existing.

How many of yours genuinely need to be awake at once?