Billing rules and plan limits
Credit conversion, billed dimensions, cycle anchoring, and the Starter free trial.
This page covers the billing rules. For a per-feature tier comparison, see the full comparison table on /pricing — it is rendered from a capability matrix derived from the backend configuration, so it cannot drift from the code. This page deliberately does not duplicate it.
Credit-system core rules
- Conversion: $1 = 1,000 credits (
CREDITS_PER_DOLLAR = 1000) - Billed dimensions: model tokens, PDF OCR per page, TTS per character, present mode per generated character, tool calls (e.g. web search)
- Hard cap: each tier stops when its monthly allowance runs out — no overage; wait for the next cycle or upgrade
- Anchor day: billing cycle anchors to subscription start date (falls back to account creation date if no subscription)
What actually differs between tiers
Tiers differ in exactly three things: monthly credit allowance, BYOK access, and support level. For the per-tier numbers, see the full comparison table on /pricing.
Everything else is identical across all tiers and does not depend on your subscription: PDF OCR, TTS narration, custom widget development, and workspace count (unlimited). These consume credits rather than tier permissions — Free users can use all of them, just with a smaller allowance.
Starter free trial
- Auto-activated: every new account gets 30 days of Starter on signup — no credit card
- Expiry: auto-downgrades to Free after 30 days; all your data is preserved; upgrade to a paid tier at any time
- Covers: full BYOK capability + Starter's monthly credit allowance
Why do Starter and Free have the same credits?
Starter's core value is BYOK — plug in your own OpenAI / Anthropic / DeepSeek key and inference costs move to your own bill, no longer hitting the platform credit budget. Platform credits only cover infrastructure costs like OCR and TTS. If you own your own key but occasionally dip into platform models, Starter is the sweet spot.
When do Pro / Max make sense
When your workload relies mainly on platform-hosted models (you don't want to manage multiple keys; you prefer a stable default experience), Pro / Max deliver 19× / 69× the monthly credits and drop the marginal cost per request to cents.
Billing cycle example
- Signup April 15 → anchor day = 15th
- April 15 – May 14: first cycle, credits refresh on April 15 (Starter trial active)
- May 15: trial expires, auto-downgrades to Free. If you upgraded to Pro, May 15 refreshes 19,000 credits.