---
title: "Credits system"
description: "Understand the meinGPT credits system — what credits are, how they're consumed, and where you see your usage"
canonical_url: "https://meingpt.com/en/docs/platform/credits"
language: en
---

# Credits system

The meinGPT credits system enables fair and transparent billing for AI usage. Every interaction with AI models consumes credits depending on the model chosen, the length of the conversation, and which features are used.

## What are credits?

Credits are the consumption currency inside meinGPT:

- **1 credit = €0.01** (1 cent)
- **Prepaid system** — credits are purchased ahead of time and managed at the workspace level
- **Workspace-wide** — members, teams, assistants, and workflows all draw from the same balance

Credits are managed by workspace admins. As a user you see your share of consumption and possibly your personal usage limit — but typically you don't purchase credits yourself.

## How credits are consumed

Credit consumption depends on three factors:

- **Model choice** — premium and reasoning models (Claude Opus, GPT-5.4 Pro, o3) consume significantly more per token than cheap models (GPT-5 Nano, Gemini 2.5 Flash). The per-token table is on the [admin model overview](/en/docs/admin-guide/pricing).
- **Input and output length** — measured in tokens. Long conversations with verbose answers consume more than short questions.
- **Feature usage** — image generation, translation, audio transcription, and workflow steps have their own prices.

### Example calculation

A chat with GPT-4o:

```text
- Input: 523 tokens × 3.00 € / 1M = 0.16 credits
- Response: 1,247 tokens × 12.00 € / 1M = 1.50 credits
- Total: ~1.7 credits = 0.017 €
```

Tool calls don't carry their own flat fee - their inputs and outputs count as normal tokens of the surrounding chat response and are billed through the regular model budget.

A normal chat costs a few cents. Image generation, high-resolution models, and complex workflows push consumption up significantly.

## Where you see your usage

As a user you find your usage in two places:

- **In the sidebar** — small chart with your personal usage limit (if an admin has assigned you a [usage tier](/en/docs/admin-guide/usage-limits)). Hover to see details.
- **In your profile** — under **Settings → Profile** you see the consumed budget, the total of your limits, and the split across categories (text generation, image generation, API usage, other features). If you have no personal limit (an "unlimited" usage tier, common for many admin accounts), this page shows only an "unlimited usage" notice instead – the category breakdown does not appear, and the sidebar chart is hidden entirely in that case.
- **In the chat itself** — once a single message (from roughly 10 credits) or the whole chat (from roughly 50 credits) gets unusually expensive, a banner appears above the input field with a cost estimate for your next message and a "Switch to a cheaper model?" link.

**How the four categories differ:** Every request counts toward **exactly one** category, based on which access path it goes through — not on which model or what kind of content is generated. Chat, workflows, and assistants all count toward **text generation**, even when you use them purely to generate text. If you call the same functionality through the **[meinGPT API](/en/docs/api)** instead (for example from your own script or an integration), that usage counts toward **API usage** — regardless of the fact that it also generates text. The two categories are mutually exclusive for any single request: no individual request is ever charged twice. The full category mapping is listed under [Usage limits](/en/docs/admin-guide/usage-limits#limits).

The in-chat warning is a **forward-looking estimate, not a spend tracker**: it estimates what your *next* message would cost based on the current context-window size - it does not add up the credits already spent over the chat's history. If [automatic chat summarization](/en/docs/platform/chats#very-long-chats) is enabled for your workspace, the context shrinks again after a summarization pass, so the warning can disappear or never trigger at all even though the chat has already cost well over 50 credits in total. The platform currently has no view of actual credits spent per individual chat; you can see your overall consumption under **Settings → Profile** (personal) or, as an admin, under [Manage billing](/en/docs/admin-guide/billing) (workspace-wide, by month).

**The per-day cost breakdown** (under the subscription settings, visible to workspace admins) shows consumption per model in Euro – including usage covered by an inclusive/fair-use quota that is therefore not deducted from your balance. The amount shown there is a consumption estimate, not a statement of whether that amount was actually charged. To see what was actually billed, check the category overview under **Settings → Profile** (or the sidebar chart) – this reflects only actually-charged credits, though only as a monthly total without a per-model breakdown.

When you hit your limit, you get a warning at 50 %, 75 %, 95 %, and 100 %. At 100 % other models get disabled for you, but you can still manually select our free model (GPT-5 Nano) and keep working with it — you don't get locked out completely. The warning dialog lets you request an upgrade to the next-higher usage tier. This fallback only applies to the text generation category — image generation, API usage, and the "Other" category (translation, meeting summarization) have no fallback model and are fully blocked once their limit is reached.

## Export: usage is not the same as balance movement

Each sheet in the usage export answers a different question. If you compare totals across sheets, it helps to know the difference:

- **Chargeback summary** shows only AI usage that was charged against your balance, broken down by user, month and model. This is the sheet for internal cost allocation.
- **Bookkeeping entries** shows every balance movement that is not AI usage: top-ups, initial credits, and manual corrections.

The total on the **Chargeback summary** sheet is therefore deliberately **not** the change in your balance. It leaves out usage that ran against a monthly allowance or a free model and was never charged, and it leaves out every booking that is not AI usage.

To understand why your balance moved by a particular amount over a period, export **Chargeback summary and Bookkeeping entries together** — only both sheets side by side give you the full picture. If a difference remains after that, contact support and we will reconcile the period transaction by transaction.

## Cents vs. euros — important note

In the platform, amounts are sometimes shown in **credits** (= cents), sometimes in **euros**:

- **Credits** are cents. 8,500 credits = 85.00 €.
- **Euro amounts** read directly.

If a number looks surprisingly large, always check the unit. The platform tries to label the unit explicitly everywhere.

## Using credits efficiently

A few tips that matter most in practice:

- **Match the model to the task** — use cheap models for simple tasks, premium models only where you really need them. The gap between the cheapest and most expensive models is 10–30×.
- **Keep conversations focused** — when the topic changes, start a new chat instead of continuing in a long thread. Long threads are sent as input in every new turn.
- **Use workflows and assistants** for recurring tasks — they reduce manual input and often use cheaper models for individual steps.
- **Image generation with care** — high-resolution images (GPT Image 1) cost from 0.30 € per image, fast models (FLUX.2 Klein) from 0.018 €.

## Frequently asked questions

**Do credits expire?**
No. Purchased credits remain valid indefinitely.

**Can I return credits?**
Already purchased credits can't be returned. For special cases, reach out to our support.

**Am I charged if a message fails or gets cut off?**
For a single request that fails before producing any output, no credits are charged. For larger requests that run in multiple steps – for example reviewing an attached document – steps that already completed are charged even if a later step fails or the request doesn't finish overall. This isn't a double charge; it reflects processing that has already happened.

**What if a meeting transcription fails or is only partial?**
If a transcription fails completely (status "Failed"), it isn't billed — no credits are charged. If the transcription service does return a result, though, the full reported audio or video length is billed, even if the transcript itself is incomplete or cut off. There's currently no automatic refund for that case — contact our support with the meeting name and date, and we'll review it manually.

**What happens when the workspace balance hits zero or goes negative?**
Paid models are then blocked for every member until your admin tops up — a negative balance is treated exactly like a balance of €0.00, there's no soft threshold in between. You can still manually select our free model (GPT-5 Nano) and keep working with it during this time; every other model returns the ["Workspace has no credits left"](/en/docs/platform/chat-errors#credits-exhausted) error. To prevent this, the admin can set up [automatic top-up](/en/docs/admin-guide/billing#automatic-top-up-auto-topup) — but that only applies to paid plans. On a trial workspace, auto-topup stays paused even if configured; the only options there are a manual card purchase or [upgrading to a paid plan](/en/docs/admin-guide/billing#upgrading-to-a-paid-plan).

**Buddy is affected too:** Unlike the main chat, you can't switch to a free model yourself as an individual member in Buddy – Buddy requests will fail during this time. A workspace admin can, however, set a fixed model for the whole workspace under **Settings → Buddy → Buddy model**, for example GPT-5 Nano, so Buddy stays usable even with an empty balance.

**What happens when only my personal limit is hit?**
Other models get disabled for you, but you can still manually select our free model and keep working with it — answers will be a bit less capable. The warning dialog lets you request an upgrade to the next-higher tier. Image generation, API usage, and "Other" have no fallback model: once that category's limit is reached, further requests in that category are blocked until the next billing period or a tier upgrade.

**How accurate is the forecast?**
The usage forecast is based on your historical usage and is a guideline — not a guarantee.

## For workspace admins

If you manage your workspace's balance:

### [Manage billing](/en/docs/admin-guide/billing)

Buy credits, set up auto-topup, maintain billing details, export top-up history.

### [Usage limits](/en/docs/admin-guide/usage-limits)

Set per-user-group cost ceilings and manage upgrade requests.

### [All models and prices](/en/docs/admin-guide/pricing)

Per-token and per-image prices for every model and service.

### [Cost calculator](/en/docs/admin-guide/cost-calculator)

Simulate likely monthly costs based on expected usage.