Billing & Credits

You only pay for what you actually use, billed at our providers’ cost with no markup added. We don’t profit from usage — we charge exactly what the AI models and infrastructure cost us.

At a glance

Everything below just explains this table in plain language — read on only if something isn’t clear.

Credits and your balance

Your balance is simply money, measured in credits:

• 1 credit = 1 US cent ($0.01). So 100 credits = $1, and 1,000 credits = $10.
• Your dashboard shows the balance in dollars (e.g. $24.50).
• Every new account starts with $30 of free starter balance, plus a batch of bonus AI credits to try things out — no card required.

You add money from the Add credits screen. Top-ups are 1:1 with no fees: pay $10, get $10 of balance. Ready-made packs are $10, $25, and $50, or you can enter a custom amount. Credits never expire — money you’ve added stays on your balance until you spend it.

What you pay for

In your billing dashboard, usage is grouped into three categories.

AI Assistant — the cost of AI “thinking”

Every time an AI model reads your instructions and writes a response, it processes tokens (roughly, pieces of words). You’re billed per token at the exact list price of the model, with no markup. More capable models cost more. Prices below are US dollars per million tokens:

A million tokens is a lot of text, so a typical message costs a fraction of a cent. Repeated context is cached, so re-reading it costs only 10% of the normal input price. Takeaway: use a lighter model (Haiku/Sonnet) for simple tasks and the stronger one (Opus) only where you need it.

Execution — the cost of running your code

When your flow runs a Code block, it uses processor (CPU) time, billed at our cloud provider’s cost. In practice that’s tiny — roughly 1 cent for every ~8 minutes of pure compute. A code block that runs for 10 seconds costs about $0.01. Most flows never notice this line at all.

Storage — the cost of holding your files

When you upload files (for example, to a Knowledge base), we hold them on cloud storage at the provider’s price: about 1.5 cents per gigabyte.

Storage works as a refundable deposit, not a recurring rent. The amount is set aside when you upload, and returned to your balance in full when you delete the file. Keep a file → the deposit stays reserved. Remove it → you get every cent back.

Daily allowance vs. your real balance

Your plan includes a daily allowance — a free quota that refills every day at 00:00 UTC:

• Free plan: $3 of usage per day
• Pro plan: $10 of usage per day

Pro is a paid subscription — $25/month (a discounted annual option is also available) — that raises your daily allowance and resource limits. It renews automatically until you cancel; the Free plan stays free with no subscription.

This is the key thing most people miss: usage is always paid from your daily allowance first, and only then from your real balance. So on a light day your actual balance may not move at all — the daily allowance covered everything.

The daily allowance does not roll over: unused allowance resets each day. Your real (paid) balance, by contrast, always carries over. Pro accounts also get a small overdraft buffer (up to $5 below zero) so a running flow is never hard-stopped mid-action — it’s settled automatically on your next top-up.

Staying in control

• Low-balance alerts. We notify you when your balance drops below $10 (you can change this threshold in settings).
• Full history. Every charge, top-up, and refund is recorded in your billing ledger — you can always trace where a credit went.
• No surprise renewals on usage. Usage is pay-as-you-go from your balance; it’s never auto-billed to a card without a top-up you choose to make.

Frequently asked questions

Do my credits expire? No. Money you add to your balance stays until you spend it. Only the daily allowance resets each day — your real balance does not.

Why didn’t my balance go down after I used the bot today? Because your daily allowance ($3 on Free, $10 on Pro) is spent first. Your real balance only starts decreasing once the day’s allowance is used up.

Do you add a markup on AI or infrastructure? No. AI tokens are billed at the model’s list price, compute at our cloud provider’s CPU price, and storage at the provider’s storage price. We charge exactly what it costs us.

Will I get my storage charge back? Yes. Storage is a deposit, not a fee. When you delete a file, the full amount is returned to your balance.

What’s the minimum top-up? The smallest ready-made pack is $10, and you can also enter a custom amount. Top-ups are 1:1 — pay $X, receive $X of balance, with no fees.

What happens if my balance runs out? Free accounts pause paid usage until you top up. Pro accounts have a small $5 overdraft buffer so an in-progress action isn’t interrupted; it’s settled on your next top-up.

How do I spend less? Use a lighter AI model (Haiku or Sonnet) for routine tasks, keep the heavy model (Opus) for the steps that truly need it, and delete files you no longer need to free up their storage deposit.

For any billing question, contact us at info@grailgun.ai.

This page is informational and supplements our Terms of Service and Refund Policy. Prices reflect current provider rates and may change; the up-to-date figures always appear in your dashboard.