Image, video and audio generation, ordinary AI chat and paid workflow steps draw from the same general credit balance. Generators and prompt-polish tools show a quote before submission; ordinary chat settles its actual charge after the reply, and audio shows its reservation and final settlement. Paid plans also include a separate daily allowance for the two polish buttons. This post explains the general credit pools and their spending order.
One credit unit, with a $0.01 settlement reference
Plans, packs and weekly allowances use the same credit unit. A GPT Image 2.5 2K high image costs 10 credits whichever eligible pool pays for it. The $0.01 figure is the settlement reference; the cash purchase price per credit depends on the plan and billing cycle. Higher tiers offer a lower purchase price per credit within the same cycle.
The spending order
- Subscription quota — included in your plan, resets at the start of every billing cycle.
- Credit packs — one-time top-ups, valid for 12 months, consumed oldest-expiry first.
- Balance — permanent credits from rewards, referrals or admin adjustments. These never expire.
Because the plan quota is spent first, a pack you buy today is only touched once the current cycle allowance runs out — which is why the expiry date on a pack is a real deadline worth watching.
What resets, what expires, what carries over
- Plan quota: per billing cycle, and the unused remainder does not carry over.
- Credit packs: 12 months from purchase, independent of your subscription.
- Weekly free allowance: for accounts without an active plan, 18 credits in the account’s first week and 15 every week after; resets every Monday UTC and does not stack.
- Permanent balance: no expiry.
Yearly plans bill once a year at a lower effective monthly price, but they still release credits per month — they do not grant twelve months of credits upfront.
When a generation fails
Credits are reserved when a job starts and settled when it finishes. If a generation fails, times out or its output is rejected, the reservation is returned to the same pool it came from — plan quota back to the quota, pack credits back to the pack. You can watch this happen in Settings → Credits, which lists every movement with its pool and expiry.
Where credits actually come from
- Weekly free allowance — 18 credits in an account’s first week (15 plus a 3-credit welcome bonus), then 15 every week. It resets every Monday UTC, does not stack, and whatever you do not use that week is gone.
- Subscription quota — released per billing cycle, not per year: a yearly plan still grants credits month by month rather than twelve months upfront.
- Credit packs — one-time top-ups valid for 12 months, spent oldest-expiry first, and only after the current cycle allowance is used up.
- Permanent balance — referral rewards and adjustments. No expiry, and it is the last pool to be touched.
Without an active subscription, the weekly allowance is spent before other general credit pools and resets each Monday UTC. With an active plan, the monthly plan quota takes that first position. Packs keep their own expiry, while permanent balance credits retain their no-expiry status.
What a plan changes (and what it does not)
- Media model access is available across tiers, subject to credits, supported settings and current availability. An active Starter or higher subscription unlocks ordinary AI chat and new Constellation operations.
- It changes media concurrency: 1 task at a time on Free, then 2 on Starter, 4 on Pro, 8 on Max and 12 on Max-L.
- It changes watermarking: free-tier downloads carry the Callirra mark, active subscriptions download clean.
- A matching task uses the same credit tariff across tiers. The actual cash purchase price per credit depends on the plan and cycle; subscriptions also add daily polish allowances and covered permanent storage.
Three habits that make the balance predictable
- Read the quote before running: the generator shows the exact credit cost of the current settings, and it updates when you change model, tier or duration.
- Explore at the cheap tier and finish at the expensive one. MiniMax H3 spans 1 credit per second at 480P to 10 at 2K for the same prompt, so blocking out shots cheaply is worth more than any discount.
- Review the full video quote. Applicable input-video charges and output charges follow the selected model and mode, so reference duration can affect the total alongside output duration.
Everything above is checkable from your own account: Settings → Credits lists the pools, their expiries and every movement, and each task in your history shows what it cost and what was refunded if it failed.