Credits & Usage

What a Credit Is

Every Router9 plan includes a monthly credit allowance. 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.

Monthly Quota by Plan

Each plan grants a fresh credit quota at the start of every month (1st of the month, 00:00 UTC).

The quota is shared across all requests made with the Token Plan's API key, including Skill calls. Audio, vision, and image-generation Skills consume from this same monthly credit allowance — see Tool Usage & Credits.

Rollover Credits

Unused credits roll over. At the start of each month you keep 80% of whatever you didn't use in the previous period, added on top of the new monthly quota.

Rolled-over credits accumulate up to a hard cap of 2× your monthly quota, so your effective allowance for a period is:

effective allowance = monthly quota + min(0.8 × previous unused credits, monthly quota)
                    ≤ 2 × monthly quota

For example, on the Pro plan (500,000/month):

• You use 300,000 of 500,000 → 200,000 unused.
• Next month you bank 80% × 200,000 = 160,000 rolled over.
• Your effective allowance becomes 500,000 + 160,000 = 660,000.

The cap guarantees a plan never carries more than 2× its monthly quota, so balances can't grow without bound. Rollover is tracked per Token Plan, and only the immediately preceding month carries forward (a fully idle month does not stack).

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 (monthly quota + rolled-over credits) 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 Profile → 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 months you genuinely exceed your allowance.

Credit Headers

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

X-Credits-Limit: 660000
X-Credits-Rollover: 160000
X-Credits-Remaining: 487320
X-Credits-Reset: 2026-07-01T00:00:00Z

• X-Credits-Limit — your effective allowance for the period (monthly quota + rollover)
• X-Credits-Rollover — credits rolled over from the previous period
• X-Credits-Remaining — credits left in the current period (before overage)
• X-Credits-Reset — when the allowance resets (start of next billing period)

429 — Credits Exhausted

When both the effective allowance (quota + rollover) and prepaid balance are gone:

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

{
  "error": "Monthly credit allowance exhausted. Resets at 2026-07-01T00:00:00Z"
}

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

Monitoring Credits

Track your credit usage in the dashboard under Plan → Usage. The usage page shows:

• A Credit Allowance bar — credits used vs. your effective allowance (quota + rollover)
• Rolled-over credits banked from last period
• 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": 160000,
    "effectiveAllowance": 660000,
    "planCreditsUsed": 12680,
    "paidCreditsUsed": 0,
    "remaining": 647320,
    "paidBalanceCredits": 250000,
    "periodEnd": "2026-07-01T00:00:00.000Z"
  }
}

FAQs

Do credits roll over to the next month? Yes. You keep 80% of unused credits into the next period, on top of the new monthly quota. Rolled-over credits accumulate up to a hard cap of 2× your monthly quota. Only the immediately preceding month carries forward.

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 monthly volume, weighted by how expensive each model is. Both apply independently.

How do I get more credits? Top up your prepaid balance from Profile → Billing for immediate pay-as-you-go headroom, or upgrade to a higher plan for a larger monthly allowance. See Billing & Plans.