Credits & Billing

Purchase credits, track usage, and manage your billing

Credits are the currency of the Archipelag.io network. You spend credits to run AI inference jobs, and Islands earn credits for completing them.

How credits work

Detail	Value
Exchange rate	1 credit ≈ $0.01 (100 credits = $1)
Expiration	Credits never expire
Refunds	Non-refundable
Deduction	Atomic — deducted when the job executes, never double-charged

Credits are deducted using an atomic database operation (UPDATE ... WHERE credits >= price), so you’ll never be charged more than your balance allows, and there’s no risk of double-charging from concurrent requests.

Purchasing credits

Visit /credits to buy credits:

{% step(title="Browse packages") %} Credit packages are displayed as cards, each showing the package name, price in USD, and number of credits included.

Buy

Click the purchase button on any package — it shows the exact price (e.g. **"Buy for $4.99"**). Each card also shows your **projected balance** after purchase so you know exactly what you'll end up with.

Complete payment

Enter your payment details on Stripe. A Stripe customer account is created automatically if you don't have one.

Credits added

After payment, you're redirected back to `/credits` with your updated balance. Credits are available immediately.

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Viewing your balance

Your credit balance is shown in three places:

/credits — large display with approximate USD value
Navigation sidebar — your credit count appears next to “Credits” in the account dropdown, highlighted in amber when low (< 10)
Chat & Image Gen — a low-credits nudge appears when your balance drops below 10, with a direct link to purchase more

Purchase history

The /credits page includes a table of all past purchases showing:

Column	Description
Date	When the purchase was made
Package	Name of the credit package
Credits	Number of credits received
Amount	USD amount paid

Stripe integration

All payments are processed securely through Stripe. Archipelag.io never stores your payment card details.

Credit costs

Credit costs vary by Cargo type and are determined by the market pricing system:

Cargo	Approximate cost
LLM chat (standard)	1–5 credits per request
LLM chat (high quality)	5–20 credits per request
Image generation	10–50 credits per request

Exact costs depend on the Cargo, model size, and the Island’s asking price. Islands set their own asking prices for each Cargo they serve — your job is matched with the cheapest available Island that meets your bid. You can view current market rates on the Compute Exchange.

If you want to set a maximum price you’re willing to pay, you can include a bid_price when submitting a job via the API.

Free tier

Depending on platform configuration, a small amount of usage (up to 5 credits) may be allowed without KYC verification. Beyond that, [identity verification](/platform/verification/) is required.

{% card(title="Chat Interface", href="/platform/chat/") %} Use credits for AI chat

Identity Verification

Required for spending credits

API Reference

Programmatic job submission

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