Sistava

Understand Your Credits

Credits are the currency that pays for everything your AI employees do.

TL;DR

Every time an employee thinks, calls a paid tool, generates media, or takes a voice or meeting minute, it spends credits from your workspace balance. As a rough guide, 1,000 credits costs about $2.50 to $4 depending on your plan. Watch your balance in the top-right corner of your workspace, or see the full breakdown under Settings, Subscription, Credit Usage.

What Is a Credit?

A credit is the billing unit for all AI work on the platform. Instead of tracking dollars for every model call and tool invocation separately, everything is measured in credits: your workspace has a credit balance, employees spend credits when they work, and you upgrade your plan when you need more.

Credits are cheaper on the plans built for heavier use. Across the paid plans, 1,000 credits costs roughly $2.45 to $2.50; the platform's baseline internal rate is $3.80 per 1,000 credits. Treat the numbers above as ballpark, not an exact conversion, since the real cost of a given action still depends on which AI model and tools your employee uses.

Credits belong to your workspace, not to you personally. If you own more than one organization, each one has its own separate plan and its own separate credit balance; usage in one never draws down the other.

What Costs Credits

AI Usage (the biggest factor)

Every time an employee thinks, responds, or processes information, it uses an AI model. The cost depends on which model tier the employee is set to.

Tier Best For Approximate Cost
Fast Simple lookups, formatting, drafts, quick Q&A Lowest, roughly 8x cheaper than Advanced
Standard Everyday tasks, conversations, analysis Medium
Advanced Complex reasoning, long documents, nuanced work High
Frontier The most capable models available (only tier that skips the "not on the best brain" notice) Highest, billed per model

You choose the model tier per employee on their Profile tab, under the Brain section (Employee, Profile, Brain). Fast is great for routine work and saves credits; Advanced and Frontier are best for tasks that need deeper thinking. The exact credit charge for a given message always reflects the real cost of the model and tokens used, not a flat per-message fee.

Other Credit Costs

Activity Approximate Cost When It Applies
Voice calls About 19 credits per minute While your employee is speaking and listening on a live voice call
Meeting attendance About 8 credits per minute While your employee is sitting in a live Meet, Zoom, or Teams call
Image generation Roughly 40 to 170 credits per image Depends on the model and quality (standard vs. high)
Video generation Priced per second of output video Varies by model and resolution
Connected app calls About 0.3 credits per call When using Gmail, Slack, Notion, or other connected apps
Mailbox emails sent About 0.4 credits per email Each outbound email your employee sends from its mailbox address

Voice and meeting costs above are estimates; the final charge is calculated from the exact call duration.

What Does NOT Cost Credits

Where to See Your Credit Balance

The Credit Bar (always visible)

Look at the top-right corner of your workspace. You will see your current plan name, a progress bar showing how much of your monthly allowance remains, and the percentage left. This updates as your employees work; the bar turns yellow under 25% remaining and red under 10%.

Click the credit bar to open a dropdown with more detail:

Per-Message Cost

Every chat message from your employee shows how many credits it cost. Click the inspect button on any message to see a detailed breakdown: input tokens, output tokens, and tool usage.

Credit Usage Page (Full Details)

For a complete picture, go to Settings (gear icon in the sidebar), Subscription, Credit Usage.

This page has five sections:

Credit Usage (current billing period)

A detailed breakdown of spending this month, including AI usage by tier and model, tool calls, internal AI operations, and voice and mailbox activity. Most of these line items reflect the model and tool costs above; compute time and task completion currently show as zero cost. Each line counts a charge once, and the Total charged row at the bottom is the sum of the lines above it, matching the total in Credit Spend Breakdown.

Credit Spend Breakdown

See the credits in this period that followed an instruction you sent to an employee and the credits from automated or system work. The card separately shows how many distinct direct instructions caused charged work; that smaller number is not a credit total or your total message count.

Direct instructions include paid work started from a human request in chat, Slack, or another human channel. Routine and proactive work still consume credits when they call paid models or tools, even when no person sends a new request. The Automation & system figure is the reconciled remainder. If an older ledger row has no recoverable original trigger, the page discloses its amount and includes it in that remainder only so the charged total stays exact.

The chart below is the same ledger grouped by the operation that incurred each charge: AI work, connected tools, Officer checks, knowledge and training, voice, meetings, video, emails, or any other charged action. It lists the exact credits and recorded operations for every charged group. This is a different question from how the work started, so the two totals are deliberately kept separate.

Credit Runway

A single chart shows your remaining balance from the start of this month to today, then a dashed projection through the reset date. It names your recorded daily burn rate and tells you whether credits are on track to last or when they may run out.

Usage History

A month-by-month breakdown of your credit consumption and work activity.

Credit Grants

A table of all bonus credits you have received: promo codes, referral rewards, and admin grants. Each row shows the date, source, and amount.

How to Earn FREE Credits

Referral Program

Invite people to the platform and you both earn credits. Here is how:

  1. Go to Settings (gear icon), Subscription, Get Free Credits
  2. You will see your personal referral link and stats
  3. Share your link by copying it, or send an email invite directly from the page
  4. When someone signs up using your link, you both receive 1,000 bonus credits
  5. You can earn referral credits for up to 10 successful signups

The page shows your invites sent, how many were accepted, and total credits earned.

Free Plan

New signups land on a plan picker with no credits until they choose a plan. Picking the Free plan costs nothing and no card is required: it grants 2,000 lifetime credits that never reset, enough to try several conversations and a few tasks before deciding on a paid plan.

Promo Codes

From time to time, promotional codes are available that grant bonus credits. Redeem one from the same Get Free Credits page at any time, not only at signup. Redeemed codes show up in your Credit Grants table.

Credit Alerts

You do not need to watch your balance constantly. The platform notifies you automatically:

Threshold What Happens
25% remaining You receive an in-app notification that credits are getting low
15% remaining A more urgent notification warns you credits are critically low
0% remaining A final notification tells you credits are exhausted

Each alert only re-fires if things get worse, so you will not be spammed with repeats at the same level.

What Happens When Credits Run Out

When your balance hits zero:

To resume: upgrade your plan, or wait for your next billing period when your monthly credits refresh. Everything comes back online automatically once credits are available.

Tips & Tricks

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What happens when credits run out? A: All AI work pauses. Chat locks with an upgrade prompt, voice calls end, and scheduled work waits until credits return. You are warned at 25% and 15% remaining. Upgrade your plan or wait for your next billing cycle to resume.

Q: Can I see how many credits a single message costs? A: Yes. Every message shows its credit cost. Click the inspect button for a full breakdown by model and token type (input, output, reasoning).

Q: Do unused credits roll over to the next month? A: No. Monthly plan credits reset at the start of each billing period. Free plan credits are the exception: they are a one-time lifetime grant that never resets, but also never refills.

Q: Are local AI models (Ollama) free? A: Yes. If an employee uses an Ollama model running on your own machine, zero credits are charged for the AI thinking.

Q: Can I set a credit budget per employee? A: Not currently. Spending limits are set at the workspace level (Technical, Rate Limits), not per employee.

Q: What is the difference between Fast, Standard, Advanced, and Frontier? A: These are model tiers. Fast models respond quickly and cost the least, great for simple tasks. Standard models balance capability and cost for everyday work. Advanced and Frontier models are the most capable for complex reasoning but cost more per message.

Q: How are credits tracked if I own multiple organizations? A: Credits are tracked per organization, not per user. If you own two organizations, each one has its own plan and its own separate credit balance; using one does not draw down the other.