Credits & billing

Two lanes

• Platform-funded: our credits, priced from the public catalog. Each call draws down your balance and is metered as cost_micro_usd.
• Pass-through (BYOK): your own provider key. The provider bills you directly, so these calls never draw credits; they are metered as estimated_cost_micro_usd for attribution only.

Which lane a model rides is decided per-provider by its waterfall: a deployment backed by one of your provider connections is pass-through; a platform-seeded deployment is platform-funded. Either way, zero markup.

Credits

A credit is the platform’s spendable unit, pegged at a flat one cent. It is what everything is priced in, so display, checkout, and spend never drift between dollars and tokens. Today a credit is simply a cent under a friendlier name: the only thing that draws credits is routed token usage, which stays zero margin (platform-funded calls draw credits at the provider’s catalog price, with nothing added on top).

You get credits two ways, both at one cent each. The Free plan refreshes a monthly allotment. A Pro plan grants a larger monthly allotment and unlocks the Pro features. One-off top-ups buy credits without a plan, at the same flat rate. There is no markup on routed tokens; any margin comes from plans, not from a credit spread.

A new organization starts with a welcome credit grant. Your balance is the credit granted minus your billable (platform-funded) spend; pass-through usage does not count against it. Balance, spend, adding credits, and auto-recharge live in the dashboard at Credits.

Spend controls

Spend is bounded at three levels, all configured in the dashboard:

• Per-key limits: a daily platform-funded spend cap, a requests-per-minute ceiling, and a tokens-per-minute ceiling on each API key.
• Budgets: a spend ceiling scoped to the whole team, an API key, a model, an identity, or a routing pool, for a given month or as a recurring cap.
• Spend alerts: an email when monthly org spend or a budget crosses a threshold.

A key can read its own effective limits over the API. GET /api/gateway/keys/<api_key_id>/limits returns the three ceilings with platform defaults folded in; a null value means uncapped, and source is explicit when set on the key or default otherwise. Setting limits is an admin dashboard action.

curl "https://api-pr-1518.preview.experientiallabs.ai/api/gateway/keys/$API_KEY_ID/limits" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $EXPLABS_API_KEY"

Free tiers and credits overflow

Some platform-funded models carry a promotional free daily tier (today gpt-6-astra and claude-fable-5.1); the model page shows the tier as its own "Free tier" rung above the regular pay-as-you-go rate. Eligibility is a saved card and one settled $1 charge on the organization — adding a card alone is not a charge. Each tier has per-org daily and hourly token allowances (the model page names the exact numbers); cached input tokens do not count against them.

• Past the allowance the request answers 429 insufficient_quota with a free_limit_reached message and does not spend credits. The daily allowance resets at 00:00 UTC, the hourly one at the top of the hour.
• Credits overflow changes that: when on, requests past the free limit bill the overage to your credits at list price instead of throttling. The switch is org-wide (it covers every free model). It is off for an org that has never paid and turns on automatically at your first real payment — a Pro subscription, a credit top-up, or an auto-recharge — which the dashboard shows you once, right after checkout. You can also turn it on by hand once your org has a card on file and the settled $1 verification (the same bar the free tiers' card gate reads; a purchase or Pro satisfies it): an org admin flips it on any free model's page ("Past the free limit" → Use credits), or an agent can POST /api/credits-overflow on the web host with Authorization: Bearer xpl_... (enable-only, idempotent). Before that, both answer 402 verification_required — add a card and complete the $1 verification to unlock it. Turn it off again from the same model-page row.
• service_tier: "flex" on a Chat Completions or Responses request to gpt-5.6-solforwards OpenAI's flex tier and bills its rate (50% of base) at cost; on a model without tier pricing it answers 400 unsupported_capability.

When you run out

When your credit balance, a spend limit, or a free tier is exhausted, calls fail with 429 insufficient_quota; the message says which: key_daily_cap, a budget, insufficient_credits, free_limit_reached, free_tier_requires_payment (add a card and a $1 charge), or promo_byok_only (the free tier is spent and your balance cannot cover the request). It is not transient: retrying does not clear it.

How to recover

• Add credits or raise a limit in the dashboard (platform-funded lane).
• Or move the model to the pass-through lane by connecting a provider key.

The full error contract is in Errors.