Credits and billing
Your plan includes a pool of credits each month. Every reply the bot writes spends some. How many depends on which model wrote it — which is the part worth understanding before you choose one.
Why a reply is not just “one message”
Models differ in cost by more than an order of magnitude. If a plan were sold as a flat number of messages, a customer on the most capable model would cost many times what one on the cheapest does, for the same money — so either the price assumes the expensive case and everybody overpays, or it assumes the cheap one and the expensive case is sold at a loss.
Credits price the difference instead. A reply costs a number of credits set per model, so the pool costs roughly the same to serve however you spend it, and choosing a costlier model is a real choice with a visible consequence rather than a free upgrade.
The dashboard shows how many replies your remaining credits buy on the model you have selected, and updates it when you change model. That number is the one to plan against.
What counts
- Answers the bot writes spend credits, charged from what the reply actually cost rather than an estimate.
- Greetings and small talk do not. “Hi” is recognised and answered without calling a model at all.
- Replies your team sends from the inbox do not. A person typing is not inference.
- Uploading documents does not spend reply credits. Plans cap how much you can store separately.
Running out
The allowance resets monthly. When it is gone the widget stops answering rather than quietly billing you for more — an overage nobody agreed to is a worse surprise than a bot that pauses.
You have two ways back:
- Buy a top-up. Bought credits do not expire at the end of the month, and are spent alongside the monthly allowance.
- Move up a plan. The larger allowance applies immediately.
Moving down a plan takes effect at the end of the period you have already paid for, rather than shrinking your allowance the moment you click.
Watching it
The Usage page breaks spend down by model and by day. It is the fastest way to see the effect of a settings change — turning reasoning on, or raising search depth, both show up here within a day as a higher cost per reply.
Invoices are on Billing, with everything charged and everything still outstanding.