Credits & Usage

What a Credit Is

Every Router9 plan includes a credit allowance for each billing period. Credits are a single, normalized unit of usage that lets one flat-rate plan cover hundreds of models fairly — a request to an expensive model draws down more credits than the same number of tokens on a cheap one.

A credit is derived from USD at a fixed rate:

1 credit  = $0.0001
$1        = 10,000 credits

Each request consumes credits proportional to its per-model token cost — the same cost used internally for metering. You never have to reason about per-token prices: just watch your credit balance.

Quota by Plan

Each plan grants a fresh credit quota at the start of every billing period. The period is your own plan's, not a shared calendar month: it starts on the day your plan began — the day you subscribed on a paid plan, the day you signed up on Free — and renews on that same day each month.

The quota is shared across everything the account does — Studio generations and every request made with any of its API keys, including Skill calls. Audio, vision, and image-generation Skills consume from this same allowance — see Tool Usage & Credits.

Credits Reset Each Period

Unused credits do not roll over. At the end of each billing period the allowance resets to the plan's quota, whatever was left of the last one.

Only a subscription that already existed when this rule changed is treated differently: until the end of the calendar month in which the change took effect, it keeps the old rollover (60% of unused credits on Pro, 80% on Max, capped at 2× the quota). After that month it resets each period like every other plan. For such an account the headers and API fields below report the rolled-over amount; for everyone else they report 0.

How Credits Are Consumed

request → resolved model → per-model token cost (USD) → credits = cost ÷ $0.0001

Because credits track real per-model cost:

• A long chat completion on a frontier model consumes more credits than a short one on a small model.
• Input, output, and multimodal tokens all count toward the cost.
• The credit charge is applied after the response completes (the exact output token count is only known then), so your remaining balance updates once the request finishes.

Pay-As-You-Go Overage

When your effective allowance for the period is exhausted, Router9 does not immediately block your harness. Instead:

1. Further usage is drawn from your account's prepaid balance (a USD pool for pay-as-you-go overage).
2. Requests are rejected with 429 only when both the effective allowance and the prepaid balance are exhausted.
3. Top up the prepaid balance at any time from Studio's Billing page (/studio/settings/billing) to keep running past your allowance before the next billing period.

This means you can run a flat-rate plan with confidence, and only pay more in the periods you genuinely exceed your allowance.

Credit Headers

Token endpoints (/v1/chat/completions) return your live credit state on every response:

X-Credits-Limit: 500000
X-Credits-Rollover: 0
X-Credits-Remaining: 327320

• X-Credits-Limit — your effective allowance for the period
• X-Credits-Rollover — credits carried in from the previous period; 0 unless the account is still finishing a pre-change cycle (see above)
• X-Credits-Remaining — credits left in the current period (before overage)

429 — Credits Exhausted

When both the effective allowance and the prepaid balance are gone:

HTTP/1.1 429 Too Many Requests
X-Credits-Reset: 2026-07-01T00:00:00.000Z

X-Credits-Reset — when the allowance next resets, the end of your billing period — is sent only on this response.

{
  "error": "Monthly credit quota exhausted. Resets at 2026-07-01T00:00:00.000Z. Upgrade your plan or top up credits to continue."
}

To resolve it, either top up your balance (immediate) or upgrade your plan for a larger allowance.

Monitoring Credits

Track your credit usage on Studio's Usage page (/studio/settings/usage). It shows:

• A Credit Allowance bar — credits used vs. your effective allowance
• Remaining credits and the reset date
• Any prepaid (overage) credits consumed this period

You can also query it programmatically via GET /v1/billing/credits.

API

GET /v1/billing/credits returns the current period's credit state:

{
  "success": true,
  "data": {
    "plan": "PRO",
    "allowance": 500000,
    "rolledOverCredits": 0,
    "effectiveAllowance": 500000,
    "planCreditsUsed": 12680,
    "paidCreditsUsed": 0,
    "remaining": 487320,
    "paidBalanceCredits": 250000,
    "periodEnd": "2026-07-01T00:00:00.000Z",
    "rolloverEligible": false
  }
}

FAQs

Do credits roll over to the next period? No. The allowance resets to your plan's quota at the start of every billing period. The only exception is a subscription still finishing a cycle that began before rollover was removed — see Credits Reset Each Period.

What's the difference between credits and rate limits? The 4-hour rate limit is a short-window burst guard (requests per 4 hours). Credits govern your total volume for the period, weighted by how expensive each model is. Both apply independently.

How do I get more credits? Top up your prepaid balance from Studio's Billing page (/studio/settings/billing) for immediate pay-as-you-go headroom, or upgrade to a higher plan for a larger allowance. See Billing & Plans.