Credits and plans

What a credit is, what spends one, what the plans and packs cost, and what happens when you run out.

Everything on a board that only moves your own material around is free. Anything that asks a model to do work costs credits. This page says which is which, what the subscription includes, and what happens the moment you run out — so none of it is a surprise in the middle of a generation.

What a credit is#

One credit is one US cent of estimated AI cost. It is a unit of measurement, not a separate currency you top up before you can work: a subscription includes a pool of them, and credit packs exist for the months you go past it.

Credits exist because "one use" is not a useful unit. Rewriting a sentence and writing a forty-minute lecture from a whole board are both one click, and they are not the same amount of work. Counting cost instead of clicks means a short action stays cheap.

What is free#

None of these cost anything, on any plan, including no plan at all:

• Boards, sections, columns and images — as many as you like.
• Dropping in screenshots, PDFs and pasted text, and importing a PDF's text layer verbatim.
• Search, undo, and everything you do on the board by hand.
• Reviewing flashcards you already have: drawing the queue, grading a card, the scheduling.
• Sitting a paper you have already set, and playing a lecture that has already been narrated.

Before you subscribe, two AI actions are also free: Suggest sections when you make a new board, and Fill board. A board you cannot fill has nothing on it to make cards or papers from, so the way in is not gated. It needs a verified email address, is capped at 20 a day, and draws on a small trial-sized pool of 50 credits a month.

What spends credits#

Anything that calls a model. That is:

How much each one costs

There is no fixed price per action, and publishing one would be a guess. What a generation costs depends on which model is running that task and how much of your board goes into the request — a paper set from a dense board costs more than one set from a thin one. What the app does instead is show you the real number: the Account page tracks what you have actually spent, as a share of what your plan includes.

Two things about the mechanics are worth knowing, because they are visible:

• A generation holds 30 credits while it runs. The hold is deliberately pessimistic. When the answer comes back, the meter settles on what the call actually cost and the difference goes straight back. A balance that dips and recovers is that.
• A live viva reserves 30 credits when it starts and settles on what the session really used, never below 10 credits and never above 90. A long viva cannot run away with the pass.

The plans#

Both buy exactly the same thing. The only difference is how often they bill.

A subscription includes:

• 75 credits per rolling 5-hour window. This is the one that paces a heavy session.
• 400 credits per calendar month.

Both are counters that reset — the window five hours after it opened, the month on the first. There is no metered overage: when the included pool is used up, big generations pause until it resets, or you spend credits.

The oral examiner is deliberately not part of a subscription. It is the Viva Pass's product, below.

Viva Pass#

A$149, bought outright, for 90 days of the AI examiner: live vivas, recorded stations and marking. It includes 3,000 viva credits, which the examiner draws on before anything else.

It is a purchase, not a subscription. It does not renew and it does not bill you again; when the 90 days are up, it stops. It sits on top of whatever else you have, so it keeps working if a subscription lapses underneath it. Buying a second pass while one is still live extends the expiry and adds its credits rather than replacing them, so no paid day and no paid credit is lost.

Credit packs#

Top-ups for the months you go past the included pool. They are one-off payments and they have no expiry.

Purchased credits are the overflow for both pools: they cover study work once the included allowance is gone, and viva work once a pass's credits are gone.

The order of spend is always the same. Study work draws the included allowance first, then purchased credits. Examiner work draws the pass's viva credits first, then purchased credits.

When you run out#

A usage notice appears at the bottom of the screen once you are near a limit — at 70% of the current window, or 80% of the month. It leads with when things come back rather than with what has been spent, and it does not appear at all before that.

What actually happens at zero:

• Included study usage gone. Large generations pause and the app says so: "Your included usage is used up for now. Small section edits still work." It pauses until the window resets or the month rolls over, and the notice names the time.
• Small section edits keep working. Complete, Longer, Shorter and Format still run past zero — up to 50 a day, on a small fast model, on inputs up to about 16,000 characters. This exists so a paused account is still usable for tidying up.
• Viva credits gone. The examiner stops with "Your viva credits are used up. Top up in Account to continue." A credit pack restarts it.
• You can end up slightly in the red. A generation occasionally settles above the 30 credits it held. That shows on the Account page as credits of overrun, and it comes off your next top-up. It is arithmetic, not a short-changed pack.

Rate limits#

Separate from cost: caps on how fast requests can be made, so one account cannot crowd out everyone else. These are the ones a normal user could actually reach.

Two different refusals come out of this, and they want different things from you. "Too many requests — try again in N s" means the window is full; wait it out. "An earlier request of yours is still running — try again in N s" means something you already started has not finished; wait for that one rather than pressing again.

Nothing is charged for a refused request. It never reaches a model.

Failed and truncated generations#

Plainly, because this is the part people assume the worst about:

• Refused before it ran — too large, rate-limited, or stopped by the content check. Nothing is reserved and nothing is charged. It never reached a provider.
• Failed with nothing produced. The 30-credit hold is refunded in full. You are charged nothing.
• Came back unfinished. If a model runs past its output limit, the answer is discarded but the provider has already charged for the words it wrote, so the meter settles on that real usage rather than pretending it was free. You are charged for what was actually generated, never for a finished answer you did not get. The app notices this itself and retries once.
• A free section edit that cost nothing does not burn one of the day's 50 passes.

The principle throughout: the meter settles on what was really spent at the provider, up or down, rather than on what was held or on what was asked for.

Where to see your balance#

Account → Usage & credits is the whole picture:

• Included usage, as a share of the current session window and of this month.
• Your credit balance, and any overrun carried against it.
• Your Viva Pass balance and the date it expires, while one is live.
• Buttons to buy a credit pack or a Viva Pass, and to subscribe if you have not.

Manage billing on the same page opens the payment portal, where invoices, the card on file and cancelling a subscription live. Receipts are emailed when a payment goes through.

Prices are in Australian dollars. If you pay by a method that settles later — direct debit or a bank transfer — the checkout finishes before the money moves, and the credits or the pass arrive when the payment actually clears, which can take a few days. A refund or a chargeback reverses the grant it paid for.