Documentation · 3 min read
What a turn costs
Credits are spent per turn, for what that turn actually used — why a first build costs more than a correction, and what a failed turn costs.
Charged for what it uses
A turn is not a flat fee. When it finishes, what it actually consumed is measured and that is what comes off your balance — so a whole first build and a one-word correction do not cost the same, because they are not the same amount of work.
This is the opposite of how most tools price this, and it is the reason the credits number moves by wildly different amounts depending on what you asked for. That is correct behaviour, not a fault.
Note. The real figure for every turn is shown against the reply it produced. You never have to estimate, and nothing on this page is a quote.
What makes a turn expensive
Roughly, how much has to be written and how much has to be read to write it. A first build is both — nothing exists yet and the whole site has to be produced. A correction is neither: the site is already there and one part of it changes.
| Turn | Relative cost | Why |
|---|---|---|
| A first full build | The largest | Every page written from nothing |
| A new page or section | Moderate | Real writing, against a site that exists |
| Reword, move, resize | Near the minimum | Small change, small output |
| A question in Plan mode | Small | It answers rather than builds |
Tip. If you are going to make five fiddly layout changes, they are cheapest as five small turns rather than one large one — and easier to undo, because each has its own version to go back to.
The minimum, and the rounding
There is a floor on every turn, so a trivial change is cheap rather than free. And the figure is rounded up rather than down — credits are whole things, and rounding a small turn down to nothing would make it free by accident.
Both of these work in the same direction and both are small. They exist so the arithmetic is predictable, not to pad the number.
The rules, in full
- Charged
- At the end of the turn, on what it used
- Minimum
- A small floor on every turn
- Rounding
- Up, to a whole credit
- A failed turn
- Nothing — see below
- Shown
- Against the reply, every time
A turn that fails
If a turn does not produce anything, it does not cost anything. That is the intended behaviour and it is worth stating plainly, because the alternative — paying for an error message — is the thing people reasonably fear about usage-based pricing.
A turn that produces something you did not like is a different case, and it is charged. It did the work; the work was not what you wanted. Restoring the previous version costs nothing.
Running low
Credits come with every plan and top-ups can be bought at any time in packs from $5.
A top-up sits OUTSIDE your monthly credits rather than replacing them, and none of it expires. Buying a pack mid-month does not reset anything and does not waste what you already had.
- Press the credit balance in the top bar.
- Choose an amount.
- Pay — the credits land immediately.
Note. If a build is refused for want of credits, the packs open on the spot rather than sending you off to find them. You come back to the same screen.
Common questions
Why did that turn cost so much more than the last one?
Because it did more. The commonest version of this is a first build against a small edit — the first writes an entire site and the second changes a line. The figure shown against each reply is the actual measurement, not an estimate.
Do credits expire?
Top-up credits do not. They sit outside the monthly allowance rather than replacing it.
Am I charged for a turn I cancel?
A turn that produces nothing costs nothing. One that produced something and was then undone did the work, so it is charged — restoring the earlier version is free.
Is there a cheaper model?
Yes — the model is chosen beside the composer, and a faster one costs meaningfully less per turn. It is a reasonable default for small corrections once the site exists.