# Lifetime Credits (Free)

Pick the Free plan and your workspace gets 2,000 credits in one grant, no card required. Those credits never reset and never expire; you spend them at your own pace across chat, tools, and media generation until they run out. It is a one-time bucket, not a monthly allowance, so it is meant for trying the platform before you commit to a paid plan.

When you choose the Free plan during signup, your workspace receives 2,000 credits as a single, one-time grant. There is no monthly refill and no card on file. You spend the balance however you like across conversations, tool calls, and any AI work your employees do, and the number only goes down as you use it.

This is different from every paid plan, where credits are a monthly allowance that resets each billing period. Free lifetime credits behave like a starter budget: the 2,000 credits you get on day one are the only credits that account will ever receive under the Free plan. There is no waiting for next month to get more, because there is no next month cycle for this bucket.

The distinction that matters against the paid alternative is permanence versus recurrence. A paid plan's monthly credits vanish and refill on schedule whether you use them or not, so a light month is wasted allowance. A lifetime grant carries no such clock: two employees, a handful of conversations, and a few completed tasks are usually enough to see whether the platform earns a paid seat, and the credits sit untouched between sessions instead of expiring on a calendar you don't control.

Free workspaces are capped at 2 employees and 1 workspace, which keeps the plan scoped to real evaluation rather than production use. Once the 2,000 credits are spent, the workspace does not lose access. It simply behaves the same way a paid workspace does at zero balance: AI work pauses until you upgrade to a paid plan or add a credit pack.

One thing to know before you start: the Free plan asks you to confirm your email address before your employees will talk to you. It is a single click in the message sent to you at signup, and it is the only step on the way in. Paid plans skip it, because the payment already establishes who you are.

The other useful thing to understand is what happens to this bucket when you do move to a paid plan. A monthly plan does not stack its allowance on top of your leftover starter credits; it replaces that starting pool with a proper monthly one that renews every billing period. Your credit history keeps the original grant visible and simply marks it as superseded, so the record of what you were given is never rewritten, only retired.

It is worth being honest about what the plan is not sized for. The employee and workspace caps on Free, and a small one off allowance for sending outbound email that follows the same never resets logic, are set to make a genuine trial possible rather than to run a business on forever. Nothing expires and nothing is taken away, but nothing replenishes either.

## What Counts Against the Free Grant

The same activities that cost credits on any plan cost credits here: AI usage from your employees (the biggest factor, priced by model tier), connected app calls, voice minutes, meeting attendance, mailbox sends, and media generation. Task creation, workflow starts, and file management stay free of charge on every plan, Free included.

Nothing about the Free plan changes what is billed, only how the balance is funded. A Free workspace sees the exact same per-message and per-action cost breakdown as a paid workspace; it is simply spending from a 2,000-credit starting balance instead of a monthly refill.

## When the Balance Hits Zero

A Free workspace at zero credits behaves like any other workspace out of credits: the chat composer locks with an upgrade prompt, any active response stops, voice calls end, and scheduled or autonomous work is skipped without erroring until credits are available again.

To keep working, you upgrade to a paid plan, which switches the workspace to a monthly allowance that refills every billing period. There is no way to top up the Free plan's lifetime bucket a second time; it is a single grant by design, sized to let you evaluate the platform, not to run indefinitely.

## Lifetime Credits Versus A Monthly Allowance

The two work on opposite clocks, and knowing which one you are on explains almost everything about how your balance behaves. A monthly allowance is a recurring quota: it refills on your billing date whether or not you used the last one, so a quiet month is allowance you simply lose. A lifetime grant is a bucket: it arrives once, it has no reset date, and whatever you do not spend this week is still sitting there next month.

Neither is better in the abstract; they suit different situations. If your workload is steady, a quota that renews on a schedule matches it well and you never think about the balance. If your usage is occasional or you are still deciding whether the platform is for you, a bucket that waits for you is worth far more than a monthly figure you keep forgetting to use.

## How It Works

**One grant, spent at your own pace, no recurring refill**

Signing up lands you on a plan picker. Selecting Free (no card needed) immediately credits your new workspace with 2,000 credits. From that point, every credit-consuming action, an employee thinking, calling a paid tool, generating an image, or sitting in a meeting, draws down the same balance shown in the credit bar at the top of your workspace.

Because the plan is capped at monthly=0 with a fixed lifetime cap, there is no billing-period reset to wait for. The balance simply falls as you use the product. You can also earn more without paying: referring someone who signs up adds 1,000 credits to your balance (and 1,000 to theirs), and redeemable promo codes can add more at any time. Both show up in your Credit Grants history alongside the original Free grant.

Those extras behave like the original grant rather than like a monthly allowance. Referral and promotional credits sit in the same lifetime pool: no reset date, no billing period, and they keep counting toward your spendable balance until you use them. A Free workspace ends up with one balance made of several one time grants, each listed separately in your history.

## Use Cases

### Trying the platform before you pay

Sign up with no card, hire up to 2 employees, and run real conversations and tasks against a 2,000-credit balance to see how the platform performs before choosing a paid plan.

### A small side project with light, occasional use

For low-frequency use where a monthly allowance would mostly go unused, a one-time balance that never expires lets you spend it whenever you actually need it, without losing unused credits to a monthly reset.

### Evaluating a specific employee or workflow

Test one AI employee on a real task, like drafting emails or answering questions in Slack or Telegram, and see exactly what it costs in credits before committing budget to a paid plan sized for your team.

### Coming back to a workspace you set up months ago

You built a workspace, got busy, and did not touch it for a season. Because the grant has no expiry clock, whatever you had left is still there when you return, along with the employees you hired and everything they produced, so you pick up where you stopped instead of starting over.

## Comparison

| Before | After |
|---|---|
| Trying a platform properly means putting a card down before you know whether it does anything for you. | You start on a one time allowance with no card on file and spend it at whatever pace suits you. |
| A trial allowance expires at the end of the month whether you got round to using it or not. | The grant has no reset date, so a quiet fortnight costs you nothing and everything you did not spend is still waiting. |
| You are asked to guess what the product will cost you before you have run anything real through it. | You watch your own balance move against real conversations and real tasks, then pick a paid plan knowing the shape of your usage. |
| A trial ending usually means losing access to the workspace you spent time setting up. | The workspace stays yours when the balance reaches zero; AI work pauses until you move to a paid plan, and nothing you built is removed. |

## FAQ

### How many credits does the Free plan include?

2,000 credits, granted once when you select the Free plan. No credit card is required to claim them.

### Do Free plan credits reset every month?

No. Unlike paid plans, where credits refill each billing period, the Free plan's 2,000 credits are a one-time lifetime grant. They never reset and never expire on a schedule; they only go down as you use them.

### What happens when my Free credits run out?

AI work pauses: chat locks with an upgrade prompt, active responses stop, voice calls end, and scheduled work waits until credits return. Upgrading to a paid plan is the way to keep going, since the Free plan does not refill on its own.

### Can I add more credits to a Free workspace without upgrading?

Yes, within limits. Referring a new signup earns you 1,000 bonus credits (and 1,000 for them), and redeeming a promo code can add more. Both are one-time boosts on top of the original 2,000-credit grant, not a recurring source.

### Is the Free plan good enough for ongoing production use?

It is scoped for evaluation, not production: 2 employees, 1 workspace, and a fixed 2,000-credit ceiling that is never replenished automatically. Most teams use it to test real conversations and a few tasks, then move to a paid plan once they know the platform fits.

### Do I have to verify my email before I can chat on the Free plan?

Yes. On the Free plan you confirm your email address before your AI employees will start replying, which is one click in the message sent to you at signup. Paid plans skip the step, since the payment already establishes who you are.

### What is the difference between lifetime credits and monthly credits?

Lifetime credits are a one time bucket: granted once, never reset, and spendable at whatever pace suits you until they run out. Monthly credits are a recurring quota that refills on your billing date, so unused credits from the previous period do not carry over. The Free plan uses lifetime credits; every paid plan uses a monthly allowance.

## Where Lifetime Credits (Free) fits

Lifetime Credits (Free) is part of How you run the account itself.

Sign in the way your company already does, decide who can do what, and keep the money side legible. Credits, plans, invoices, referrals, and the controls that decide who reaches which part of the workspace.

- [How you run the account itself](/en/features/account): Your workspace, your money, your people.

## Read the guide

- [Guide: Lifetime Credits (Free)](/en/guide/billing/credits)

## More in Account & Billing

- [Monthly Credits](/en/features/account/monthly_credits): Every paid plan comes with a pool of credits that refills automatically at the start of each billing period. Credits are the single unit that pays for everything your AI employees do: thinking, tool calls, media generation, voice, and meetings. There is nothing to top up manually each month; your allowance is just there again when the new period starts.
- [Buy Credits](/en/features/account/credit_packs): Add credits to your workspace balance any time, on any plan, without changing your subscription. Pick from three one-time packs, pay by card through Stripe, and the credits land in your balance as soon as the payment clears.
- [Upgrade & Downgrade](/en/features/account/plan_upgrade_downgrade): Move to a bigger plan the moment you need more credits or a higher employee cap, and the change takes effect immediately. Move to a smaller plan when you need less, and it takes effect at the end of your current billing period so you keep what you already paid for. Both happen from Settings, Subscription, no support ticket required.
- [Promo Codes](/en/features/account/promo_codes): Redeem a promotional code for a one-time, lifetime grant of bonus credits on top of your plan's monthly allowance. Enter a code at signup or any time afterward from Settings, Subscription, Get Free Credits. Each grant shows up in your Credit Grants history with its source, date, and amount, and one code can be redeemed once per workspace.
- [Referrals](/en/features/account/referral_program): Share your personal referral link or invite someone by email, and you both get 1,000 free credits the moment they sign up. Track every invite from a dedicated Earn Credits page, and keep earning until you hit the 10-referral cap.
- [Data Retention](/en/features/account/data_retention): Sistava deletes operational data on a fixed schedule instead of keeping it forever by default. A cleanup job runs every day and removes rows past their retention window: short-lived debug data within a week or two, working memory after 30 days of inactivity, and usage and activity history after two years. Chat messages, documents your employees write, and persistent notes are kept indefinitely unless you delete them yourself. There is no setting to change these windows; they apply the same way to every workspace.
- [Google Sign-In](/en/features/account/oauth_google): Sign in to Sistava with your Google account instead of creating a separate password. Choose Sign up with Google on the signup page and your workspace is ready after one approval, with your name and photo carried over automatically from Google. Because Google has already confirmed your email address, there is no verification email to chase before your AI employees can start working.
- [Microsoft Sign-In](/en/features/account/oauth_microsoft): Sign up or sign in with your Microsoft account instead of creating a password. Sistava reads your Microsoft account's name, email, and profile photo to set up your account, and your Profile page shows Microsoft as your connected sign-in method. Because Microsoft has already confirmed the address belongs to you, the account counts as verified from the start and your employees can begin working straight away. Google sign-in and an ordinary email and password are the other two ways in.
- [Workspace Roles](/en/features/account/tenant_roles): Every workspace you create has an Owner, Admin, and Collaborator role, each with a fixed set of permissions over billing, the collaborator roster, and resource access. Owners can grant a non-owner collaborator extra access, or take some away, without changing their overall role. A Roles page shows your own effective access and the full permission matrix so nobody has to guess what they can do.
- [User Profile Picture](/en/features/account/user_profile_avatar): Upload a photo for your account so your teammates and AI employees see a real picture of you instead of initials. It shows up in chat, comments, and the collaborator list across every workspace you belong to. If you signed up with Google or Microsoft, your picture is pulled in automatically the first time you sign in, and you can replace it any time.
- [Two-Factor Authentication](/en/features/account/two_factor_auth): Add a second sign-in step to your Sistava account using any TOTP authenticator app, like Google Authenticator or Authy. Once enabled, a code from your app is required in addition to your password, so a leaked or guessed password alone is not enough to get in. Turning it on immediately signs out every other active session, so a session created before you enabled it cannot be used to bypass it.
- [Feedback Board](/en/features/account/feedback_board): Submit bug reports, feature requests, improvements, and questions from inside the app, then vote on what other users have asked for. Every item lands on one Community Board visible to the whole platform, sorted by vote count, so the most-wanted ideas surface for the team automatically.

## Explore

- [Every feature](/en/features)
- [Hire an AI employee](/en/market)
- [Pricing](/en/pricing)