Credits & usage
Credits are the unit of AI usage. Each reply costs credits based on its model; your plan includes a monthly allotment. Learn what spends credits, how per-model costs work, and how to track and stretch your balance.
View as MarkdownA credit is the unit of AI usage in Bookbag. Every AI reply your agents generate consumes credits, and each plan includes a monthly credit allotment. This page explains exactly what spends credits, how per-model pricing works, and how to keep usage under control.
Credit metering applies to Bookbag Cloud. The self-hosted open-source build is unmetered — usage is unlimited and credits aren't enforced.
What costs credits
Credits are spent on AI replies, and only on AI replies. Building and maintaining your agent is free.
| Action | Costs credits? |
|---|---|
| An agent generating an AI reply | Yes — by the reply's model credit cost |
| Adding or retraining a data source | No |
| Crawling, chunking, and embedding | No |
| Inspecting the prompt in the playground | No (it doesn't call the model) |
| Replies on the Bookbag Local model | No (1-credit cost, and not provider-backed) |
Because training is free, you never have to ration how much knowledge you give an agent. Add sources liberally and retrain whenever your content changes.
Per-model credit cost
A reply's cost equals the credit cost of the model that produced it. Cheaper, faster models cost less per reply; premium models cost more. This is the single biggest lever on your usage.
| Model | Credits per reply |
|---|---|
| Bookbag Local | 1 |
| GPT-4o mini | 1 |
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | 2 |
| Claude Sonnet 4.6 | 4 |
| GPT-4o | 5 |
A workspace running everything on GPT-4o spends up to 5x the credits of one running on GPT-4o mini for the same conversation volume. See Models & model choice for how to pick the right model for each agent.
Plan allotments
Each plan grants a monthly credit allotment when you subscribe. New workspaces are provisioned with their plan's credits immediately so you can build and test right away.
| Plan | Credits / month |
|---|---|
| Free | 100 |
| Hobby | 2,000 |
| Standard | 12,000 |
| Pro | 40,000 |
| Enterprise | Custom |
See Plans & billing for full plan details and pricing, or the pricing page.
In cloud mode, when your balance reaches zero, AI replies are blocked until your allotment renews or you upgrade. Watch your balance as you scale — high volume on a premium model can draw down an allotment fast.
Tracking usage
Bookbag logs every metered reply to a usage ledger, so you can see where credits go:
- Per-agent credit usage appears in Analytics, windowed by date — so you can see which agent and which period drove spend.
- Workspace balance and total usage are summarized in Plans & billing.
- Each ledger entry records the model, agent, and conversation, so usage is fully attributable.
Stretching your credits
- 1Use the cheapest model that's accurateFor most ecommerce FAQ the data does the work — a 1-credit model answers as well as a 5-credit one. Reserve premium models for agents that truly need them.
- 2Pin high-frequency answers as Q&AQ&A pairs still cost a reply, but precise pinned answers reduce re-asks and escalations, lowering total volume.
- 3Let the agent resolve moreA higher resolution rate means fewer back-and-forth turns and fewer escalations — each saved turn is a saved reply.
- 4Consider BYO at scaleHigh-volume teams with their own provider accounts can bring their own keys to move LLM cost off credits and onto their provider bill.