Billing and top-ups
Pay-as-you-go works from a prepaid balance. You add funds, each request is charged at the model's price for the tokens (or images, seconds, pages) it actually used, and the cost comes off the balance. There are no subscriptions, minimums or gateway fees: a top-up credits exactly the amount you pay.
The balance belongs to the organization, so every project and every member's keys draw on it.
Add funds
Open Billing, pick an amount and a payment method:
- Card — save a card once, then top-ups are charged to it straight away. Your bank may ask for extra verification.
- Checkout page — pay on a secure hosted page. Your balance updates once the payment is confirmed.
- Crypto — pay on a hosted checkout page, where offered.
Preset amounts run from $5 to $1,000, or enter any whole-dollar amount in that range. Card details go directly to Stripe; we keep only the brand and last four digits.
Auto top-up
Auto top-up keeps requests from stalling when the balance runs low. Set a threshold and an amount: when the balance falls below the threshold, the saved card is charged that amount.
If an automatic charge fails, it's retried later and the billing page shows a warning. After several failures in a row, auto top-up turns itself off; replace the card or save the setting again to turn it back on.
How requests are charged
- The price is the model's list price minus any discount on your organization, and it is the same whichever way the request was served.
- You pay for what was used: input and output tokens, cached tokens at their lower rate, and per-unit prices for images, audio, video, pages and searches.
- Every reply reports what it cost in
usage.cost(usage and cost). The same figure is in your logs, and totals are in analytics.
A request needs a positive balance to start. Because the exact cost of a request is only known when it finishes, the balance can dip slightly below zero after a large one; the next top-up covers it.
When the balance is empty, requests are refused with a 402 and nothing is charged. When the balance can't be confirmed, requests are refused with a 503 rather than allowed through — retry shortly.
Payment history
The billing page lists every top-up with its amount, method and status. The available balance, total funded, and any payments still being confirmed are shown at the top.
Checking the balance from code
GET /v1/credits returns the balance and total spend — see authentication.