Credits

Every time the agent does something. Thinks, plans, writes code, fixes a bug. It uses credits. This page explains exactly how that works so you can estimate, budget, and stop them slipping through your fingers.

Credits are held by your account. It has one monthly-credit pool and one separate top-up pool, shared by everyone who can build in it. Credits cannot be moved between accounts.

On Business, the owner can independently block a team seat from billable work or give it an optional per-billing-cycle credit cap. A cap does not create a separate wallet and does not transfer credits to that person: every successful charge still comes from the one shared account wallet. The owner is not subject to a cap, although the account wallet and plan entitlements still apply.

What a credit actually is

A credit is our internal unit for "a bit of agent work." One credit covers the thinking, the AI call, and the surrounding services (storage, live preview, exports) for one request.

Credits are not dollars. They're a stable way to price effort no matter which AI we're using underneath. We don't change credit prices retroactively: what cost 3 credits yesterday still costs 3 credits tomorrow.

What each plan gives you

Free lets you explore project templates and the code editor so you can see how the agent builds. Running your own prompts against the models starts on Pro. Credits reset at the start of each billing period on paid plans. Unused monthly credits do not roll over.

Top-ups. If an account burns through its monthly allowance, its owner can buy more from Account billing. Top-up packs come in the same ten credit sizes as the subscription tiers (200, 400, 800, 1,200, 2,000, 3,000, 4,000, 5,000, 7,500, and 10,000) and are priced in line with that account's plan family. Topped-up credits are recorded in that account's separate balance. They don't expire at the next cycle and survive plan changes or cancellation, but they cannot be transferred to another account. On Free they remain stored and become spendable again after the account returns to an eligible paid plan.

Where a cap applies, running work first counts as reserved so two simultaneous jobs cannot both slip past the limit. When a job finishes, only the credits actually consumed count as used; unused reserved credits are released. Disabling spending or lowering a cap blocks new work immediately, but it does not corrupt or double-charge a hold that was already authorized.

What things cost

These numbers come from real builds we ran on the live system - three runs per scenario, every cost captured. Use them to budget; the dashboard shows your actual charge in real time.

Publishing to the App Store / Google Play. When you publish through Appsanic, it builds the release in the cloud and uploads it to your store account for you. That carries a flat credit fee charged once each time you publish, the same in both columns because it doesn't depend on the model you built with - indicatively around 30 credits for iPhone and 15 for Android. Each publish targets one store, so being on both stores is two publishes (about 45 credits in total). The Publish dialog shows the exact cost before you confirm, and that figure is authoritative because pricing is set server-side. Full walkthrough: Publishing to the App Store and Google Play.

Publishing through Appsanic is rolling out. The one-click flow is how it works: you connect your store account, click Publish, and Appsanic builds and uploads your app for you. While we finalise it, if it is not yet enabled on your account you can publish today by exporting your code and running EAS yourself (eas build and eas submit), which doesn't touch your Appsanic credits - you only pay Apple and Google their account fees. We will remove this note when the flow is live for everyone.

Cost scales with three things:

• What size you're building. Tiny tweaks are nearly free; full app skeletons cost more because the agent has to write more code in one go.
• How much of your app the agent has to read. Larger codebases cost more because there's more context to load.
• Whether you're on Fast or Pro. Sanic Pro thinks longer and barely varies between runs - handy when consistency matters. Fast is cheaper and faster for everyday edits but spends a bit more on harder prompts. Use Pro when the answer matters; stay on Fast for everyday work.

Where to see your balance

The active account's balance lives in the top-right of the builder and on Account usage. You get:

• Credits remaining this cycle.
• Top-up credits (no expiry).
• A breakdown of where today's spend went.

If a prompt is about to take you past your remaining balance, we'll warn you and offer a one-click top-up before you run out.

How to not waste credits

These are the four biggest credit-wasters, with fixes.

1. Vague prompts that need three clarifying rounds

Don't say:

"Make it feel more professional."

Cost: the agent asks what "professional" means, you answer, it tries, you refine again. Three rounds of spend.

Say:

"Tighten the typography, match the spacing to Linear's pricing page, and give the buttons a subtle hover state."

Cost: one round. The full playbook is in Writing Prompts.

2. Using Pro for Fast work

Pro on a copy change is a waste. Use Fast for anything small and local. Pro for anything that cuts across multiple parts of the app.

3. Mid-build reversals

Asking "actually, go back to how it was" costs both the original build and the undo. Before you experiment, Export to GitHub first so you have a safe checkpoint. Reverting on GitHub is free; reverting through the agent isn't.

4. Restarting instead of redirecting

When a conversation gets tangled, don't throw the project away. Open a new conversation inside the same project and keep the code you already liked. You pay for the new conversation, not for rebuilding what you already have.

What happens when you hit zero

If your credits run out mid-cycle:

• New prompts are blocked with a clear message.
• Your project, your live preview, and your GitHub export are untouched. Nothing gets deleted.
• The account owner can top up from Account billing, or upgrade that account's plan.
• Next billing cycle, your allowance resets automatically.

Are credits refundable?

Credits already used aren't refundable. If the agent produces output you don't like, that's a prompt or expectation problem rather than a billing problem, so Writing Prompts is the fix. Not a refund.

When a subscription or top-up payment is refunded, the credits originally provided by that payment are reversed in proportion to the refund. Monthly and top-up credits stay in their own pools; a refund never silently converts one kind into the other. If some of those credits were already used or reserved, the shortfall is tracked against the same pool instead of creating free credit.

Your Refund Policy rights under Australian Consumer Law still apply for any genuine service-level failure on our end.

Next

You know the economics now. Time to build: start with Authentication, Database & Data, or jump to anything in the sidebar that catches your eye.