Credits & billing
Prepaid, pay-per-call billing. Top up credits that never expire; each successful call debits the call’s price.
How billing works
Billing is prepaid and per-call. AI-model endpoints bill per model queried (query one and pay only for that model). Data endpoints (/v1/keywords, /v1/trends) are flat per call; /v1/usage is free. A call is only billed on success; a failed call is recorded but not charged.
Top-ups
Add credits via Stripe ($25 minimum). Credits never expire. New accounts get $1 free to test. Prices are USD; internally we meter in micro-credits for 5-decimal per-call precision.
Spend limits and concurrent calls
Optional daily and monthly spend limits are enforced before provider work starts. Cite42 temporarily reserves each call’s maximum possible price, and live reservations count toward both limits until those calls settle. The reservation is then replaced by the exact charge, which may be lower. With concurrent work, another call can therefore receive 429 while finalized spend is still below the limit; retry after the in-flight calls finish.
Billing in the response
Every billed call returns a billing block with the exact cost and remaining balance, so agents see spend per call with no surprises:
{ "billing": { "cost": { "usd": "0.22" }, "balance": { "usd": "14.40" } } }