Understanding credits
What are credits?
Credits are the unit Flowly meters usage in. Every time your agent reads a message and writes a reply it spends credits, and how many depends on the model you chose and how much text moved through it — a short question to a small model costs a few credits, a long conversation with a frontier model costs more.
Paid plans include a monthly allowance: 2,400 credits on Starter, 4,000 on Pro and 12,600 on Business. Credits are divisible, so a short question might cost 0.35 and a long agent turn 11 — most messages land between 1 and 10, and an allowance covers hundreds of exchanges a month. Your remaining balance is always on the dashboard, and nothing is ever charged for a request that fails.
Two types of credits
- Included with your subscription plan
- Reset at the start of each billing cycle
- Used first before bonus credits
- Don't roll over to the next month
- Purchased separately as one-time purchases
- Never expire — use them whenever you need
- Used only after monthly credits are depleted
- Great for heavy usage months
Credit usage by model
Each model has its own rate. Tokens are roughly three quarters of a word, so a thousand tokens is about 750 words — most single messages are well under that in each direction.
| Model | Speed | Credits per 1M read | Credits per 1M written | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Sonnet 4.5 | Fast | 600 | 3,000 | Most tasks |
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | Very fast | 200 | 1,000 | Quick responses |
| MiniMax M2.1 | Fast | 100 | 400 | General chat |
| Kimi K2.5 | Medium | 100 | 500 | Complex tasks |
Monitoring usage
You can track your credit usage in several places:
- Dashboard — current balance and usage trend
- Server details — per-server usage in the Usage tab
- Billing page — detailed breakdown and purchase history
You'll receive email notifications when your credits are running low. You can also set up low-credit alerts in your dashboard settings.
Reducing credit usage
- Use efficient models. Claude Haiku is great for simple tasks and uses fewer credits.
- Keep messages concise. Shorter messages use fewer tokens.
- Use context wisely. Clear chat history when starting new topics.
- Set usage limits. Configure daily limits in server settings.
- Use your own API key. Connect OpenRouter, OpenAI, Anthropic, Moonshot, or Z.AI to bypass the credit system entirely.