Sintra AI Credits: What Uses Them and How to Save Them

Most people meet the credit system on about day twelve, when a helper stops mid-task. That is a bad moment to start reading the pricing documentation.

Sintra publishes a fairly detailed breakdown of what each action costs, which is more transparency than a lot of usage-priced tools offer. This guide walks that breakdown, then turns it into a few habits that stretch a month's allowance.

One number to anchor on before the detail. On Sintra's pricing page on 17 August 2026, every listed plan carried the same 250 monthly credits, whatever the billing term. The plan you pick changes the price, not the allowance.

What actually uses a Sintra credit?

Sintra's credits article lists the consuming actions explicitly. Chatting with helpers, using helper use-cases, a helper replying or completing a task in chat, a helper using a connected integration, saving information to Brain AI when you ask it to, generating images, retrieving or sending email, scraping websites, running scheduled tasks, and building Agent Helpers.

The exclusion list is shorter and worth knowing. The same article names background features that do not consume credits: answering guided questions, generating Daily Ideas, scheduling and publishing posts, and adding snippets yourself.

How much does each action cost?

Sintra publishes per-action figures, reproduced below as they were documented on 17 August 2026. Read them as ranges rather than promises, because most entries genuinely vary with the size of the job.

Their documentation also notes that prompting an Agent Helper on a complex task can reach up to 100 credits. Against a 250 credit monthly allowance, that single line is the most important one in the table.

Notice the shape of it. Conversation is cheap, generation is moderate, and anything that produces a finished artefact such as a video or a website is where the month actually goes.

Where do you check your credit balance?

Sintra's documentation gives a specific path. In the web app, click the workspace icon in the upper left, open settings from the cog-wheel icon in the bottom left, and go to Usage and Billing.

That screen shows your remaining credits as a fraction, a usage bar, your reset date and your current plan. Their example reads 100 out of 200, meaning 100 credits are left.

Put a recurring reminder on the same day each week to look at that number. Sintra does send a pop-up when you are running low, but a warning at 10 percent remaining arrives too late to change how you worked that month.

When do credits reset, and do they roll over?

They reset monthly, and they do not roll over. Sintra's documentation states that credits reset on the same date and time you started your subscription, and that unused credits do not carry into the next billing period.

There is one exception in their docs. Extra credits granted as goodwill behave differently: they do not reset at the start of each billing cycle, and instead expire, typically within a year.

Their article also states that credits cannot be transferred between accounts or workspaces. If you run more than one workspace, plan the allocation up front rather than hoping to move a surplus later.

What happens when you run out?

Helpers stop. Sintra's documentation is direct about it: if a workspace runs out of credits, helpers will stop working, and you get a pop-up notice when you are low.

The fix is a top-up, purchased from the same Usage and Billing screen through an option their docs describe as Add credits. Two details matter here: their documentation states top-ups are non-refundable, and that they stay in the account until they are consumed or expire.

How fast do 250 credits actually go?

Sintra does not publish a burn-rate estimate, so this section is independent testing rather than official documentation. Treat it as directional.

One reviewer at Roborhythms reported that a single blog post draft including SEO research plus a cut-down social version consumed roughly 20 to 30 credits, and expected regular users to buy top-ups. A review published by Eesel described a range from around ten days of light use down to about two days of heavy use involving image generation and data analysis.

Both are one person's usage rather than a benchmark, and neither matches every workflow. The useful takeaway is the ratio, not the number: text work is affordable and media work is not.

Six habits that make the allowance last

• Batch email retrieval. A week of email is priced at 1 credit. Four separate ad hoc pulls cost you four times as much as one deliberate weekly review.
• Brief once, properly. Every message you send and every reply you get is metered. Three vague messages plus three replies cost more than one clear brief that lands first time.
• Bring your own images where you can. Generated images are priced per image and regeneration is where people lose a week's worth without noticing.
• Audit scheduled tasks monthly. A scheduled task costs credits every time it runs. A task you set up in week one and forgot is a standing charge.
• Use the free background features. Adding snippets yourself and scheduling or publishing posts are documented as costing nothing. Do those manually and save the meter for generation.
• Price the big jobs first. A video or a built website can take a meaningful slice of the month. Decide those deliberately at the start of a cycle, not on a whim at the end of one.

The thing a credit meter changes about how you work

Usage pricing is honest in a way flat pricing is not, and Sintra deserves credit for publishing a per-action table at all. Plenty of tools in this category will not tell you what anything costs.

The real effect is subtler than the invoice. A meter changes your behaviour: you start hesitating before asking for a second draft, and hesitating before asking a question is the opposite of what an assistant is for.

That tension is one of the reasons we priced Sistava the way we did. You hire an AI Employee for a monthly rate per role, and the cost of the work it does is our problem, not a number you watch. Plans start at $50 a month, and you can see the full breakdown on our pricing page.

Neither model is wrong. Metered pricing suits occasional bursts of work, and per-role pricing suits work you want happening whether or not you are watching the counter. Pick the one that matches how you actually operate.

Sources

• Sintra Help Center, Workspace credits
• Sintra pricing page, plans and included credits, read 17 August 2026
• Sintra Help Center, Integrations explained
• Roborhythms, independent hands-on review with credit burn observations
• Eesel, independent review with usage-rate estimates