Credits

Credits are Runchat’s universal currency for running AI models and tools across text, image, video, and 3D generation.

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How credits work

When you run a model, Runchat calculates the credit cost based on the model’s unit pricing. Different models charge in different units:

• Token-based models (LLMs), charged per token for input and output separately
• Image models, charged per image generated
• Video models, charged per video or per second of video
• 3D models, charged per mesh generated

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Buying credits

Every account starts with 500 free credits on the Starter plan. You can get more credits by:

• Credit top-ups, pay-as-you-go credits, $1 per 1000 credits
• Subscribing to a plan, monthly credits included with Hobby ($15 of credits/mo), Pro ($50 of credits/mo), and Max ($150 of credits/mo) plans

Unused credits roll over on paid plans: plan credits and credit top-ups each carry forward for 3 months after the billing cycle that granted them ends. Starter plan credits don’t roll over, but top-ups purchased on Starter keep the same 3-month window. You can see exactly when rolled-over credits expire on your usage dashboard.

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Free models

Hobby, Pro and Max plans all include access to free models for chat and image generation, plus web search. These let you prototype and explore ideas without worrying about the cost of each generation or lookup. Free access is subject to daily, weekly and monthly caps that increase with the Pro and Max plans. Web search draws from the same free pool, so it won’t cost credits until that pool is exhausted.

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Bring your own keys

On the Hobby plan and above, you can link your own API keys from providers like OpenRouter, Fal, Gemini, and Groq. When using your own keys, model usage is billed directly to your provider account instead of consuming Runchat credits. See Credentials for setup.

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Fixed credit costs

Some actions have a fixed credit cost on top of any model cost: * On Hobby, Pro and Max plans, web search draws from the free pool and only costs credits once that pool is exhausted.

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Cost warnings

Before you run a node, you’ll see an estimated credit cost on the run button. When a run is going to cost more than 1,000 credits (roughly $1 on the Starter plan), the bolt icon turns orange. The same orange badge appears on the selection toolbar when running multiple nodes at once. The estimate is approximate. The actual cost is deducted after the run completes based on what was really used.

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Model pricing

The tables below show the current credit cost for all available default models. Prices are listed per unit (per token, per image, etc.). For token-based models, the cost depends on the number of input and output tokens. Models with prompt caching offer reduced rates for cached input tokens.

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Text models (per token)

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Image models

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Video models

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3D models

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Audio models

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Next steps

• Subscriptions: plan tiers, included credits, and team seats
• Credentials: link your own provider API keys to bypass Runchat credits