Credits system

The base conversion

VizChat uses credits as a unified unit of measure:

$1 = 1,000 credits

This ratio is hard-coded as CREDITS_PER_DOLLAR = 1000 in quota_config.py and does not vary by tier. Think of credits as "prepaid dollar fractions" — a typical AI message costs single to double digits of credits.

All costs are first expressed as "raw dollar cost", then multiplied by COST_MARKUP_MULTIPLIER = 2.0 (preserving 50% gross margin) before being converted to credits.

Monthly allowances

When credits run out, new paid AI calls are blocked for the current period until the next reset. The period anchor day equals your subscription start date (or signup date if no subscription).

Consumption categories

Credits are consumed across four independent metering dimensions:

1. AI generation (the primary driver)

Per agent call:

credits = ((prompt_tokens - cached_tokens) × input_price + cached_tokens × cached_price
           + output_tokens × output_price) × markup × 1000

Taking the default gemini-3.5-flash-lite:

One call with 1,000 input + 500 output tokens ≈ 3 credits.

2. Web search (tool calls)

→ 2 credits per search (markup included).

3. Text recognition (PDFs and images)

Uploading a PDF costs nothing: the text a PDF carries is extracted for free right after upload, so it's searchable straight away. The first time a PDF or image is read (you open its extracted text, or the AI reads its text), the whole file goes through text recognition once, charged per page; the result is kept, so reading it again costs nothing. An image counts as one page.

→ Recognizing a 100-page PDF once with GLM-OCR ≈ 100 credits.

4. TTS

BYOK: no platform credits consumed

With BYOK (Bring Your Own Key) enabled, agents call your configured model provider using your own API key (see BYOK model providers for the full list) — and:

• No platform credits are consumed
• No monthly allowance limits apply
• But platform tools (text recognition, TTS, web search) still cost credits at raw rate — they use the platform's own vendors

BYOK is available on Starter and above. See BYOK setup.

Checking usage

Settings → Usage shows credits consumed this period, remaining balance and the next reset date, plus a breakdown of this period by category: Chat (talking to the AI, including conversation titles, summaries and web search), Voiceover, Text recognition and Translation (multilingual copy for Marketplace listings).

Next step

• BYOK setup
• Pricing page
• Limits & rate caps