Plans, allowances, and credits
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idapt gives you three ways to pay for AI: a free daily allowance that every account gets, a subscription with a monthly plan, and Usage Credits that subscribers top up for usage beyond their plan. You can use one or combine them 📊
Every account draws on exactly one of these for each request:
The free daily allowance: a small pool that refills every day on the free tier. It runs the cheaper models. Nothing to set up.
A subscription:
Pro or Max, whether you work alone or with a team, and Enterprise for contract billing. A plan includes an amount of usage each week and unlocks every model.
Usage Credits: a prepaid dollar balance subscribers add on top of a plan. When your included usage runs out, extra work can draw on it.
"Pay as you go" is not a separate plan. It is what happens when a subscription spills over into your Credit balance. There is no credits-only account: without a subscription, the paid options are upgrading to a plan or bringing your own provider keys. See Credits and auto top-up and Bring your own keys.
On the free tier you can start chatting right away. Cheaper models (the $ and $$ cost bands) run on a daily allowance that refills every 24 hours. Premium models ( $$$ and $$$$) are not available on the free tier: you upgrade to a plan to reach them.
When a request would run past your free allowance, the cheapest models keep working with limits instead of stopping outright. See When chats run with caps.
A subscription grants a weekly amount of usage, measured in dollars of real model cost, plus higher storage and feature limits. Cheaper and premium models both draw on this included usage, so you are not blocked from the good models the way the free tier is.
The included usage refills on two rolling windows at once: a short 5-hour window and a longer weekly window. Premium models also draw on a separate weekly budget carved out of the total. That carve-out bounds how much of your week premium models can consume, so your everyday models keep working even after a heavy stretch of frontier-model use.
To subscribe, change plans, or cancel, see Manage your subscription.
idapt tells you exactly which limit you hit and what to do about it. It never silently charges you.
What you see | What to do |
|---|---|
Your free daily allowance is spent | Wait for it to refill, keep working with capped runs, or upgrade to a plan. |
A feature needs a subscription | Some features, like video generation, bill only against Usage Credits, and credits need an active plan. Subscribe to use them. |
Your plan's included usage is spent | Turn on pay-as-you-go so extra usage draws on your Credit balance, or upgrade your plan. |
Your plan's weekly premium budget is spent | Switch to a standard model, which still has room, or turn on pay-as-you-go. |
Your Credit balance is empty | Add credits, or turn on auto top-up so it refills on its own. |
You reached your monthly overflow cap | Raise the cap in your billing settings. |
A team limit was reached | A billing admin for the team can lift it. |
By default a subscription that runs out of included usage stops at a plan wall rather than spending your credits. To let it spill into your balance instead, turn on pay-as-you-go. See Credits and auto top-up.
Every model wears a cost band in the picker, from a green $ for the cheapest up to $$$$ for frontier models. Before you send, you also see the estimated cost of the message next to the send button.
Every model shows its price up front. When you run out of allowance and spend credits, usage is billed from your balance at the prices shown in the app. See Choosing models to compare bands and capabilities.
Your plan sets how much you can store in your Drive:
Free: 1 GB
Pro: 500 GB
Max: 2 TB
Storage up to your cap is included with your plan and is never metered. When you reach the cap, free up space or upgrade for more room. See Drive: files and folders.
Every plan also includes cloud-computer minutes each week. See Compute minutes.
Your plan, Credit balance, invoices, and usage live on the billing pages, not in a settings menu:
Open Credits from the account menu, or go to /credits, to see your plan and balance, add credits on a subscription, and find invoices.
Go to /usage to watch your allowance windows and plan limits fill up.
On a subscription, the account menu shows your Credit balance with a + to add credits without leaving your chat.
Related articles
When chats run with caps
On the free tier the cheapest models run in full and standard models run with caps. Here is exactly what changes.
Credits and auto top-up
Add a prepaid Credit balance to your subscription, keep it funded automatically, and decide whether extra usage may overflow into it.
Manage your subscription
Subscribe, upgrade, downgrade, cancel, or resume, and understand what happens to your access on each.
Compute minutes
Every plan includes cloud-computer minutes. Here is how they are counted, what happens when they run out, and how to stretch them.
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