What the credit pill actually means
Why one model costs 1 credit and another 50, and why a failed generation never lands on your bill.
Every model card on /models shows a credit number. Same on the studio “Generate” button. That number is not a marketing tier — it’s the deterministic cost formula running against the params you chose.
The formula is two parts: a fixed base credit cost, plus optional per-unit costs that depend on a param. ideogram-v3-balanced is a small flat number because a text-to-image render is cheap and fast. alibaba/wan-2.5/image-to-video is base 50 plus 10 credits per extra second past the first five, because a video render scales with duration on the vendor side too. Pick 10 seconds, you pay 100. Pick 5, you pay 50.
The numbers come from the same costJSONB column the backend uses to compute the actual charge, so “what the page shows” and “what we charge” can’t drift.
Two more rules worth knowing:
Failed generations are refunded automatically. If a job errors out at any point — vendor-side, network timeout, validation — the credit ledger refunds in the same database transaction as the failure. You never have to email us about a 0-output bill.
Credit-pack credits never expire. If you buy a pack, those credits stay in your balance while the account is active. Subscription credits refresh on each renewal and stack on top of pack credits — one balance, two sources.
Full breakdown on the Pricing page; the refund policy is on /refund.