AI Credits

What is AI Credits?

AI Credits are the metered unit Upwex uses to bill AI work. Every time the platform runs a generation - a cover letter, a Check Fit score, a Red Flags scan, a screening question answer, or an AI Improve pass - it consumes credits from your team's balance. Each plan comes with a monthly credit allowance. If you run out before the month resets, you can buy a credit pack from the billing area without changing plans. Credits are tracked at the team level, so every seat on the team draws from the same pool.

How AI Credits work

Credits are stored against your Upwex team, not against an individual seat. When you generate a cover letter, the backend records the cost of that call against the team balance and shows the updated number in the dashboard. The same applies to every other AI feature - the cost varies by what the model has to do, but the unit is always credits.

Three things matter about how the balance behaves:

• Monthly allowance. Each plan includes a fixed allowance that refreshes on your billing date. The exact amount is on the pricing page and shows in your dashboard.
• Top-up packs. If you run out before the renewal date, you can buy a credit pack from the billing area. Packs are one-off purchases that add to your balance immediately. They do not change your plan.
• Team-level pool. If your plan has multiple seats, all seats draw from one credit balance. There is no per-seat sub-allocation - whoever generates first uses the next credit.

The dashboard shows your remaining balance at the top of the billing area and warns you when you are running low. Trial accounts get a fixed allowance for the full trial window rather than a per-day cap, so you can use the credits at whatever pace suits how you are testing the tool.

Refunds and edge cases are handled by support, but the routine cases - normal usage, normal top-up, normal monthly reset - need no intervention from you.

Example

You are on a paid plan and your billing date is mid-month. The day before renewal you are deep into a Webflow push and have used most of your monthly allowance generating cover letters and running Check Fit on every job in your feed. Around midday your balance gets low and the dashboard shows a warning. You click into the billing area, buy a credit pack, and keep working - the pack credits are available right away. The next morning, your monthly allowance refreshes on schedule. The unused pack credits stay in the balance alongside the new allowance, so you start the month with a buffer.

Why AI Credits matter for freelancers

Credits give you a direct read on what AI work costs. Instead of paying a flat seat fee and wondering whether you are getting value, you can look at the dashboard and see how many cover letters, fit checks, and improve passes your month produced. If you generated a stack of drafts and won contracts from a handful of them, you have a real number to compare against.

They also keep pricing fair for very different usage patterns. A freelancer who applies to three jobs a week does not subsidise one who applies to thirty. Heavy users top up. Light users do not. The plan you pay for matches the volume you actually need.

For teams, the shared pool means a busy week from one seat does not leave another seat empty. The pool moves where the work is happening. If your virtual assistant is running Auto-Bidding overnight while you are on client calls during the day, the credits flow to where the generation is actually happening, not where a per-seat quota would have parked them.

AI Credits vs traditional per-seat billing

Per-seat billing charges a flat amount for each seat, regardless of how much AI work that seat does. Credits charge for the work itself. A freelancer who applies lightly pays the plan fee and uses a fraction of the allowance. A freelancer running heavy Auto-Bidding uses the allowance and tops up when needed. The cost matches the actual generation volume rather than the number of accounts. For freelance teams where usage is uneven across people, this is a closer fit than a flat seat charge.