What credits are, and what uses them
What a credit is, what uses them fastest, and how monthly credits differ from ones you buy.
The short version
Credits are how Orsola measures work. 100 credits is a dollar's worth.
Every plan comes with an allowance each month — 1,000 credits on Free — and each thing you ask for takes a small amount out of it. You do not buy credits per action or approve anything as you go; you use what you use, and the balance goes down.
What uses more, and what uses less
Cost follows the amount of work, not the number of messages. Six kinds of work are metered, and they are not close to equal:
| Roughly | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Least | Ordinary questions and answers, searching your files or the web, weather and other quick look-ups |
| Middling | Long documents, long replies, scheduled jobs, and work the email, expense and task agents do on your behalf |
| Most | Anything with audio or video in it — recording and transcribing a meeting, spoken conversations, phone calls — and making images or video |
Cost follows the amount of work, not the number of messages
Least
- Questions and answers
- Searching your files or the web
- Weather and quick look-ups
Middling
- Long documents
- Long replies
- Scheduled jobs
- Work the email, expense and task agents do
Most
- Recording and transcribing a meeting
- Spoken conversations
- Phone calls
- Making images or video
100 credits is a dollar’s worth
Two practical consequences. A day of ordinary chat barely moves the needle. An hour-long meeting recording is a real expense, and if you record every meeting you will feel it before you feel anything else.
Monthly credits versus credits you buy
You have two pots, and they behave differently.
| Monthly allowance | Credits you buy | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it comes from | Your plan, every month | A credit pack you pay for |
| Does it expire? | Yes — unused credits do not roll over | No — they stay until spent |
| Spent first? | Yes | Only once the monthly allowance is gone |
Spending the monthly allowance first is deliberate, and it is in your favour: the pot that expires gets used before the pot that does not, so bought credits are never wasted at the end of a month.
The flip side is worth planning around. Whatever is left of your monthly allowance on renewal day is written off, not carried forward.
Seeing the cost before you confirm
Ordinary requests are not priced up in advance, and there is nothing to approve message by message. The expensive exceptions do ask first, though:
- A long video. Ask for one noticeably longer than the default and Orsola tells you it costs more and waits for you to say go ahead.
- Indexing a large file for search. The first search inside a big document has a one-off cost, and Orsola asks before paying it.
- A phone number. The monthly charge is shown in credits before you agree to it.
- Placing a call. A banner shows what is about to be dialled before anything connects.
For everything else, what you get is visibility rather than a prompt:
- A running balance on your Dashboard, split into plan credits and bought credits.
- A warning as you get low, in the conversation itself — "You've used 80% of your monthly credits", with how many are left and how long until they reset.
- Usage by category on the Dashboard afterwards, so you can see which kind of work actually consumed the month.
If you would rather not be interrupted when you run out, automatic top-up will buy a pack for you at a threshold you choose.
Where to go next
Check your balance and usage shows you where all of that lives. The plans, and what each one includes has the monthly allowance for each plan.