Where your credits went

One change, two rows in your history

Your balance drops the moment you press send, and it drops by more than the change turns out to cost. That first figure is not a price. It is a hold — credits set aside so a build cannot run out of them halfway through and leave you looking at half a site.

When the turn finishes, what it actually used is measured and priced, and the unused part of the hold goes straight back. That is the second row: a large amount out, then a smaller amount back in a few seconds later, for one instruction. Nothing has been charged twice.

So your recent activity shows the working rather than the answer. The number you were really charged is the credits line printed under the reply itself.

• The larger figure, going out, labelled Build: the hold, taken before the work starts.
• The smaller figure, coming back, labelled Refunded: the unused part of that hold, returned at the end.
• The two subtracted: what the change actually cost, which is the figure under the reply.

Tip. Occasionally a turn costs more than its hold, and then the correction runs the other way — a second, smaller debit instead of a credit. Same mechanism, opposite direction, still one charge for one instruction.

Note. Returned credits go back into the pot they came out of, and credits you bought are refilled before allowance credits are. That matters at the end of the month: money you paid for is never quietly converted into an allowance that expires.

Two similar changes, two very different prices

A turn is priced from what it used, not from what it was called. Two edits that look identical to you are rarely the same amount of reading and writing, and the gap between them can be an order of magnitude.

The largest everyday factor is what has already been read once. The parts of your site that do not have to be read again are billed at a tenth of the ordinary rate, so the second and third edit in one sitting are usually far cheaper than the first was. Come back tomorrow and that saving is gone, which is why the same edit can cost more in the morning.

There is also a small floor under every turn that genuinely ran, so a one-word change is cheap rather than free.

Auto, and why the first build is the big one

Which model ran the turn matters more than anything else on the list. Left on Auto, the model is chosen per turn: a first draft of an empty project on a paid plan is routed to Grafter 3, the most careful of the builders, and that is the dearest turn most people ever run here — in the region of 480 credits.

Edits after it route to a middle model and repairs to a cheap one. That is why the first row in your history is often larger than everything under it put together, and why nothing warned you: Auto has no single price to quote.

Tip. If you want a figure you can predict, choose a model yourself rather than leaving it on Auto. Every model in the picker shows the hold it takes before you send.

Note. Auto shows no figure beside it because it does not have one. That is honest rather than hidden, and it is also the reason a first build can be a surprise. We should say the number before the press, and today we do not.

The photography charge nobody pressed a button for

A first draft commissions original photographs for the site — up to four of them, at 5 credits each. That is a separate charge from the build, taken under its own line, and it is not included in the credits figure printed under the reply.

So the arithmetic that looks wrong is usually this one: the receipt under the build says 6 credits and 26 came off your balance. The missing 20 is four photographs.

From the second turn onwards, a message that reads as a request for a picture commissions one more at the same 5 credits. It does not have to use the word photograph. Asking for more atmosphere at the top of the page is read as asking for an image, and that is a judgement call being made on your behalf without a confirmation step.

• Up to four photographs on a first draft, 5 credits each.
• One photograph on a later turn, when the message reads as asking for an image.
• A photograph that does not come out is refunded automatically, against its own line.
• None of it is in the credits figure shown under the reply.

Tip. A free first build gets no photographs at all, and that is worth knowing before you look at it. There is no stock library behind this — the pictures are commissioned or there are none — so the free build covers the building and not the shoot, and it says so in the reply rather than failing. Everything else about the site is finished. A top-up is enough for the shoot and a run of edits afterwards.

Note. In your recent activity that charge reads Build — the same word as the turn it arrived with. Two rows saying Build for one instruction is not something you can be expected to decode, and that is our fault rather than yours. The Usage screen does name it: photography is counted there under Images, apart from Site builds.

The names do not match, and both sets are ours

Two things here go by two names each: the models, and the plans. Neither name is wrong and both sets are ours, which is the annoying part when you are trying to match a charge to the thing that caused it.

Every model in the picker carries our name as its heading and the real model at the end of its own description — Overdrive says Claude Fable 5 in the same row. Your history and the receipt under a reply print our name and only ours, so that is the one to match a charge against.

Note. Written out: Overdrive is Fable 5, Full Beam is Opus 5, Surge is Sonnet 5, Spark is Haiku 4.5, and Grafter 1, Grafter 2.1 and Grafter 3 are GPT-5.6 Luna, Terra and Sol. The figure beside each is the hold, not the price — see the top of this page.

Bronze, Silver and Gold are Trade, Growth and Studio

The same thing happens with the plans, and it splits differently. The cards you choose from are called Bronze, Silver and Gold — on the pricing page and in the panel you upgrade from, both. Once you are on one, everywhere the product names your plan back to you calls it Trade, Growth or Studio: the top bar, your account, and the figures on your credits page. Agency is called Agency throughout.

It is one plan at one price with two names. Nothing about the subscription differs depending on which name you bought it under, so if you chose Gold and your account now says Studio, you are on the plan you chose and you are paying what you agreed to pay.

Note. Bronze is Trade at $20 a month, Silver is Growth at $100, Gold is Studio at $299. The price is the reliable way to tell which is which, because that is the one thing the two names never disagree about.

Your card was charged again without you asking

Buying your first top-up does two things, and only one of them is obvious. It buys the credits, and it also saves the card and switches automatic top-ups on, armed with the pack you have just bought. From then on, when a settled balance falls to the trigger point, that pack is bought again on the saved card with nobody at the keyboard.

That is a deliberate decision on our side, not a fault, and it is the wrong way round: the second charge is one you did not separately agree to. It only ever happens on the first card an account saves — if you find the switch and turn it off, buying another top-up will not turn it back on.

The default trigger is 200 credits, which is one build's worth on any model. At most one attempt is made every five minutes, and a card that is declined is retried no more than once a day rather than every few minutes.

The switch itself is not on your credits page, which is the first place anybody looks. It is at the foot of the top-up panel, the small one that opens over the builder. From the credits page it takes two presses to reach: the button under Buying packs most months opens that panel on its plans half, and Top up credits moves across to the half the switch is on. A standing permission to charge a card sitting behind a button that says See the plans is our doing, not something you should have had to hunt for.

1. While you are building, press the credits figure in the top bar. The top-up panel opens on Add credits, which is the half the switch is on.
2. Scroll to the foot of it. Auto-reload is under the buy button, and the line beneath it names the pack, the card and the balance it fires at.
3. Turn it off. It saves as you press it, so there is nothing to confirm afterwards.

Tip. Turning it off keeps the card on file, which is what makes a manual top-up one press instead of a trip through checkout. It also clears any stuck failure state from a declined attempt.

Note. If automatic top-ups have been running for a while, the extra rows in your history read Top-up, exactly like the ones you bought by hand. The dates are the giveaway: an automatic one lands in the middle of a build rather than when you were looking at the panel.

The monthly allowance resets rather than building up

Plan credits are granted for a month and whatever is left of them is taken back at the reset. That is the row labelled Expired at renewal, and it is not a mistake or a penalty — it is what a monthly allowance is. Credits you bought as a top-up are in a different pot and never expire.

The reset date is set a month from whenever the allowance was last granted, so it is not necessarily the day your card is billed. If those two dates have drifted apart, the one on your credits page is the one that governs the credits.

Note. On the free plan the allowance is zero by design, so that screen truthfully reads nought used of nought. What is free is the first build itself — one complete site, once — rather than a monthly allowance. Every edit after it, and the enhance pass, needs credits or a plan.

Changing plan mid-month

Moving up or down replaces the monthly allowance rather than adding to it. On Starter with 400 credits left, moving to Pro gives you Pro's 10,000 — not 10,400 — and the 400 is written off in a row of its own.

This catches people because the money is prorated and the credits are not: you are invoiced only for the rest of the month, which reasonably suggests the credits will be handled the same way. They are not, and the sentence beside the upgrade button does not say so.

A downgrade does the same in the painful direction, immediately. Studio's 100,000 becomes Trade's 20,000 the moment it takes effect, however much of the month is left.

Tip. The cheapest moment to change plan is close to your reset date, when there is least left to lose. Credits you bought as top-ups are untouched by any plan change, in either direction.

Note. That write-off row reads Expired at renewal in your history, on a day that is not your renewal. It is the same row the monthly reset writes, and it borrows the same words. The real reason is recorded against it and is not shown to you, which is our fault rather than a misreading on your part.

Credits that did not come back after a build died

If a build fails properly, the hold is returned before the error reaches your screen and the balance is right within seconds. What you are reading about here is the other case: the build did not fail, it vanished. The machine running it went away, so there was no code left to hand the credits back.

Those credits are not lost. They come back, but not on a clock — a hold is only treated as abandoned after fifteen minutes, and the tidying happens on the next build you start on that account. Nobody is sweeping in the background while you wait.

So the thing that gets your credits back is starting another build. The reclaim runs before the new build's balance is checked, so the credits you are owed count towards the build that recovered them. Waiting is the one approach that does not work.

What a broken turn costs

Produced nothing

Refunded in full, immediately

Wrote some files, then failed

Charged — the work was done

Timed out and can carry on

Charged for what it did, and resumable

The machine disappeared

Returned after fifteen minutes, on your next build

You undid the result

Charged. Restoring an earlier version is free

Tip. The low-credit warning appears once a sitting, when a settled balance drops below 20 credits. That is less than a single turn on every model but the cheapest, so by the time you see it the next build has usually already been refused. Keep more than 200 in the tank and you will not meet this. The warning arriving too late is our fault, not a misreading on your part.

Note. A build that produced something you did not want is charged. It did the work; the work was wrong. Going back to the previous version costs nothing.

Building is paused and it says you owe money

This is pay as you go having done what it says: builds carried on after the credits ran out, the borrowed credits were billed at the ordinary rate, and at the point where the total reached the ceiling the account paused and an invoice went out.

One thing lifts that pause, and it is paying the invoice. Buying credits does not, because the pause is checked before your balance is ever looked at — the credits arrive and sit there unspendable. Changing or re-buying a plan does not. Switching pay as you go off does not either; the switch controls whether more can be borrowed, not what is already owed.

Nothing is lost while it sits there. Published sites stay online and untouched, your projects are exactly where you left them, and a top-up bought during the pause is spendable the moment the invoice clears.

1. Open your credits page. The amount owed and a Pay button are at the top of the pay-as-you-go panel.
2. Pay it. The account unlocks on its own once the payment is confirmed — there is nothing to press afterwards.
3. If there is no Pay button, the same invoice is payable from Manage billing, and a copy is on its way to the address on your account.

Note. If the pause arrived after a subscription lapsed, there is no pay-as-you-go switch on the page at all — it needs a paid plan to show. The invoice is still the only way out, and moving back onto a paid plan will not clear it. If the invoice never appeared anywhere, that is a failure on our side: write to us from the contact page and we will sort it out rather than leaving you to hunt for a link that does not exist.

Common questions

Why does my history show a big charge and a refund for one change?

That is the hold and its correction, not two charges. Credits are set aside before the build so it cannot run out mid-way, then the unused part comes straight back. The figure under the reply is what you actually paid.

Why did my balance drop 264 when the receipt said 64?

Photography. Original photographs are 5 credits each and are billed on their own line, outside the credits figure shown under the reply. Four of them on a first draft is 20.

Do my unused credits roll over to next month?

Plan credits do not — whatever is left of the monthly allowance is taken back at your reset date. Credits you bought as a top-up sit in a separate pot and never expire.

I signed up for Gold and everything says Studio. Am I on the wrong plan?

No. Bronze, Silver and Gold are the same three tiers as Trade, Growth and Studio — one plan, one price, two names. The cards you choose from use one set, and everywhere the product names the plan you are on uses the other.

I bought credits to lift the pause and it is still paused. What now?

Pay the invoice on your credits page. It is the only thing that lifts a pay-as-you-go pause, and the credits you bought are not lost — they are spendable as soon as it clears.

How do I stop automatic top-ups?

Press the credits figure in the top bar while you are building. The Auto-reload switch is at the foot of the panel that opens, under the buy button. Turning it off stops the charges and keeps the card, so a manual top-up stays one press.