Hard stop at zero credits. When your balance hits zero, every
credit-consuming operation returns
402 insufficient_credits. Read-only
endpoints continue to work. No overage. No invoice surprises.What every operation costs
| Operation | Credits |
|---|---|
| Chat message | 1 |
Content update (PUT /v1/content/{key}) | 1 |
Page create or update (POST/PATCH /v1/pages) | 1 |
| Image register (URL swap or multipart upload) | 1 |
| Page edit (inline AI tweak) | 2 |
| Social post — text only | 5 |
| Translate (per target language) | 7 |
| Content plan creation | 10 |
| Image generation | 32 |
| Social post — text + image | 5 + 32 |
| Social post — text + video | 5 + 40 |
| Video clip — budget (Wan 2.1, default) | 40 |
| Blog post (research + draft + featured image) | 60 |
| Video clip — premium (Kling v2.1 / Runway Gen4) | 300 |
| Website generation (full landing, multi-section) | 240 |
| Newsletter subscribe / contact-form submit | 0 |
Quality-default models. Text generation runs on Claude Sonnet 4.6 (with
Haiku 4.5 for high-volume conversational ops like chat and inline page
edits); image generation runs on Google’s Nano Banana (Gemini 2.5
image). Premium video uses Kling v2.1 / Runway Gen4. Forms (newsletters &
contact submissions) are free — they’re storage + delivery, not AI.
Premium video is gated.
tier=premium on POST /v1/videos (Kling /
Gen4) requires a Build plan or higher; Hobby and Free projects can use
the budget tier (Wan 2.1) by default and will get
402 plan_required if they ask for premium.GET) and a handful of lightweight writes (e.g.
updating a draft, attaching a tag, scheduling a post, registering a
component) do not consume credits. Mutating writes through the public API —
PUT /v1/content/{key}, POST/PATCH /v1/pages, and image_register
(URL swap on PUT /v1/images/{key} or multipart upload on POST /v1/images) —
each cost 1 credit, charged on the successful write.
Social post media surcharge.
POST /v1/social-posts with type=ai
always charges the 5-credit text base; if media_type=image or
media_type=video is also set, an extra image (32) or video (40,
budget tier) charge is recorded against the same job, so the total
reflects what was actually generated. Social posts always use the
budget video tier — request premium clips via POST /v1/videos
with tier=premium (Build+).- A blog post with 4 translations: 60 + 4 × 7 = 88 credits.
- A cross-platform social post with one image (single API call, posts to FB + IG + TikTok): 5 + 32 = 37 credits.
- A landing page with a hero image generated mid-session: 32 + 240 = 272 credits.
- A short product reel via
POST /v1/videos(budget, default) ormedia_type=videosocial: 40 credits per clip. Premium clip viatier=premium: 300 credits.
Plans
A plan doesn’t unlock features — every operation is available at every tier. A plan buys credits at a discount with a monthly allowance.| Plan | Credits / mo | Price | $/credit | Discount |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | 250 | $0 | — | — |
| Hobby | 5,000 | $25 | $0.005 | base |
| Build | 25,000 | $119 | $0.00476 | 5% off |
| Scale | 100,000 | $399 | $0.00399 | 20% off |
| Enterprise | custom | custom | volume contract | up to 40% off |
Top-ups
Top up anytime, on any tier (including Free), at the base rate of $0.005 / credit. No commitment, no expiry while the project is active.| Bundle | Credits |
|---|---|
| $20 | 4,000 |
| $100 | 20,000 |
| $500 | 100,000 |
Free tier
Every project starts with 250 credits per month, no card required. The free tier is sized for evaluation — enough to build, test and demo a working integration end to end, not enough to run a real workload. Mix-and-match examples of what 250 credits buys at the new quality-default pricing:- ~250 chat messages, or
- ~50 text-only social posts, or
- ~7 Nano Banana images, or
- 4 full Sonnet 4.6 blog posts, or
- ~6 budget video clips, or
- 1 full website generation.
tier=premium) is not available on Free or Hobby — it
requires a Build plan or higher.
Free-tier projects also surface a small “Built with Neural Draft” badge in
embedded widgets and on platform-rendered pages — turning that off requires a
paid tier.
Hit zero and the API returns 402 insufficient_credits until next month — no
surprise bills. Top up with a one-time pack or upgrade to a paid tier
whenever you’re ready.
Tracking usage
The dashboard shows a real-time credit ledger. The same data is on the API:- Soft alerts: poll
GET /v1/projects/me/usageand Slack the team whencredits_remainingdrops below 20% of the included allowance. - Per-customer cost tracking: tag your own end-customers in
metadata.customer_idon async jobs; the dashboard exports a CSV grouped by metadata. - Hard ceilings per environment: production keys have full scopes; preview
keys have
content:*only and live on a separate top-up budget.
How pricing changes
We re-evaluate credit costs roughly every 90 days against current upstream model prices (OpenAI, Anthropic, image and video providers). When upstream list prices drop materially, your credit costs drop too. When they rise, we may need to bump credit costs — always with at least 30 days’ notice before any change takes effect, communicated by email and on the changelog. Predictable, in plain words:- Per-credit pricing tracks upstream list-price moves and major capability shifts (e.g. a new model tier). Nothing else.
- Increases are pre-announced with 30+ days’ notice. You always have time to budget or move.
FAQ
What if I run out mid-job?
What if I run out mid-job?
Async jobs (blog generation, batch translation, etc.) reserve credits when
queued. If your balance is too low at queue time, the request returns
402 insufficient_credits immediately — nothing is started. Reserved
credits are refunded if the job fails for our reasons (e.g. upstream
timeout).Can I get a refund?
Can I get a refund?
Unused subscription credits don’t roll over or refund — that’s how the
discount is funded. Top-up credits are refundable for 30 days at our
discretion if your project is in good standing and you haven’t used >25% of
the bundle. Email
info@neuraldraft.io.
Do retries cost extra?
Do retries cost extra?
Failed AI generations that we retry server-side don’t cost extra — you pay
once per successful or definitively-failed job. Webhook deliveries that
retry due to your endpoint returning non-2xx are billed per delivery
attempt (0.02 credits each); we cap retries at 5 with exponential backoff.
Do I pay for read-only API calls?
Do I pay for read-only API calls?
No.
GET endpoints don’t consume credits unless explicitly noted in the
API reference for that endpoint (very few do).
Rate limits still apply — see rate-limits.What about agency / reseller pricing?
What about agency / reseller pricing?
Agencies managing multiple projects get a master billing account — every
project rolls up into a single invoice with project-level breakdowns. Email
info@neuraldraft.io for volume terms.
When am I billed?
When am I billed?
Subscriptions: monthly, on the day-of-month you signed up. Top-ups: on
purchase. Storage and recurring line items (connected accounts, custom
domains): metered hourly, billed at month-end against the included
allowance, then top-ups, then card-on-file (only if you’ve opted into
auto-recharge).