2026 (18 events)
- Aug 11, 2026 · Credit burn-rate repricing · Notion — Workers (Beta) 'Free to try now. Starts using credits on August 11' — a feature moving from free into the credit meter at a pre-announced date.
- Jun 16, 2026 · Credit burn-rate repricing · HubSpot — Content agent burn rises to 1,000 credits per content piece effective 2026-06-16 (per the legal Product & Services Catalog) — a textbook credit burn-rate repricing: the dollar price of credits is unchanged.
- Jun 14, 2026 · Policy change · Windsurf — Windsurf's standalone pricing page (windsurf.com/pricing) now 301-redirects to devin.ai — its independent published pricing has been retired as Windsurf consolidates under Cognition/Devin (observed 2026-06-14; follows the 2026-03 Cognition acquisition).
- Jun 1, 2026 · Price change · GitHub Copilot — Copilot switched to token/credit usage-based billing effective June 1, 2026; users reported 10-50x effective cost increases. Capture 2026-06-12 found the docs mid-transition (premium requests at $0.04 alongside AI credits at $0.01, base+flex split) with new individual sign-ups paused since 2026-04-20.
- May 8, 2026 · Policy change · Canva AI (Magic Studio AI allowance) — Canva launches the 'AI Pass' add-on (dedicated page first Wayback-captured May 8 2026): a fixed monthly add-on (~$100/person/month) giving heavy users a much larger AI allowance (advertised '40x more AI access' on Pro, 20x on Business) for users who exhaust the bundled allowance — a paid escape valve, but a flat add-on tier rather than auto-billed pay-as-you-go overage. (archive)
- May 6, 2026 · Policy change · monday.com — For signups from 2026-05-06, AI credits became part of the purchase flow — credits must be purchased with the plan (per official support article).
- May 5, 2026 · Credit burn-rate repricing · Bolt — May 5 2026: Pro monthly token allotment bumped 10M -> 13M at the same $20/mo (more allowance per dollar) — meter retuned favorably, dollar price and hard-allotment model held.
- May 4, 2026 · Meter adopted · Notion AI (Notion credits) — Custom Agents begin consuming Notion credits at $10 per 1,000 credits (Business/Enterprise add-on, NO credits included with any plan); run out and agents pause until an admin adds credits (hard stop), with per-agent/workspace spend caps and auto-pause on spikes.
- May 1, 2026 · Policy change · Figma AI credits — Pay-as-you-go billing for AI credits - the meter keeps running above the allotment and auto-bills to the next invoice at $0.03/credit up to an admin-set monthly spend limit - became available; live for Organization/Enterprise in Q2 2026 and added for the Professional plan in May 2026, moving the opted-in posture to metered overage.
- Apr 14, 2026 · Credit burn-rate repricing · Devin — Cognition launches new self-serve plans (Free / Pro $20 / Max $200 / Teams $80 minimum), replaces ACUs with dollar-denominated on-demand credits, and discontinues the no-minimum Core PAYG plan; included quota now refreshes daily/weekly and overage auto-bills in dollars.
- Apr 14, 2026 · Price change · HubSpot Credits (Breeze) — HubSpot shifted its two flagship Breeze agents to outcome-based pricing: Customer Agent from $1.00 per conversation to $0.50 per resolved conversation (50 credits/resolution) and Prospecting Agent from a recurring per-enrolled-contact charge to $1.00 per qualified lead recommended for outreach (100 credits/lead) -- 'you pay when it works' -- denominated in the same HubSpot Credits pool.
- Mar 19, 2026 · Policy change · Adobe Firefly — Adobe runs recurring 'unlimited generations' promos that temporarily SUSPEND the generative-credit meter (Mar 19 - Apr 22, 2026: 'After April 22, 2026, all users will return to consuming credits'; a further offer through May 2027 for sign-ups by May 21, 2026). Intermittently switching the meter off is itself a pricing-convention event.
- Mar 19, 2026 · Credit burn-rate repricing · Windsurf / Devin (Cognition) — Credit system replaced by deliberately unquantified daily/weekly quotas; Pro $15 -> $20; Max ($200) introduced; existing add-on credits converted to extra-usage dollars at price paid. A move from numeric meter to opaque allowance.
- Mar 18, 2026 · Policy change · Figma AI credits — Enforcement begins: Figma enforces Full-seat AI credit limits - run out and AI actions are blocked (in-product notification) until an admin buys more, with no automatic overage by default (a hard allotment).
- Mar 1, 2026 · Price change · Manus — Pricing restructured downward (model unchanged): Pro now $20/mo (~4,000 credits), $40/mo (~8,000 credits, 7-day trial), $200/mo (~40,000 credits); Free = 300 daily-refresh credits (1,500/mo cap) for Manus 1.6 Lite; Team from $20/seat; 17% annual discount. Roughly doubled credits-per-dollar at the entry tier vs the $39 Starter. (archive)
- Feb 14, 2026 · Credit burn-rate repricing · Bolt — Feb 14 2026: Free-tier daily token cap tightened from 200K to 150K/day — a retuning of the meter's allowance at unchanged $0 price (hardening on the free tier), not a rung move.
- Feb 6, 2026 · Policy change · HeyGen — Official restructure: 'Generative Credits' renamed 'Premium Credits' (premium features tagged 'Premium' with upfront cost estimates) and audio dubbing made credit-free; when running low HeyGen suggests credit-free alternatives ('Use Avatar III instead of Avatar IV') rather than blocking or auto-billing. (Update post dated 2026-02-06; page also last-updated May 4 2026.)
- Jan 29, 2026 · Credit burn-rate repricing · Surfer — Plan-system change: meter re-denominated from AI credits to 'Documents'; legacy credits docs apply only to pre-change subscribers; the on-demand AI-credit purchase article now 404s.
2025 (41 events)
- Dec 21, 2025 · Policy change · Canva AI (Magic Studio AI allowance) — Help page (Dec 21 2025 snapshot) splits AI tools into always-included 'AI design tools' (Canva AI text, Magic Write, Magic Resize, Background Remover) vs metered 'Premium AI tools' (Dream Lab, Canva Code, Magic Formulas, Veo-3 video at 5/mo), pooled and monthly-reset; 'If you reach your limit... have the option to upgrade for more access.' (archive)
- Dec 9, 2025 · Policy change · Figma — Figma announced the AI-credit system rollout: usage tracking shipped Dec 2025; credit subscriptions effective 2026-03-11; per-seat credit limits enforced from 2026-03-18; PAYG ($0.03/credit) by Q2 2026.
- Dec 1, 2025 · Meter adopted · ChatLLM — Credit/'compute points' meter and a Basic ($10/mo, 20,000 credits) vs Pro ($20/mo, +~5,000 ≈ 25,000 credits) split are documented in the official billing FAQ; credits reset monthly, premium models consume them while a set of cheaper models stays unlimited, and a '75% usage' message paces spend across the month. (Pro allotment later rebased to ~30,000 on the live 2026 page.) (archive)
- Nov 6, 2025 · Price change · Make — Per official help center: as of Nov 6, 2025 extra credits carry a 25% surcharge vs in-plan credits (previously manual extra purchases had no surcharge; auto-purchase was +30%). Separately, operations were replaced by credits as the billing unit ('As of August 27'; 1 op = 1 credit, prices unchanged).
- Oct 29, 2025 · Policy change · Emergent — Pricing bundle now adds a Free tier ('10 free monthly credits') and currency localization (INR pricing), but the paid structure is unchanged from launch — Standard $20/100, Pro $200/750, Team $300/1250, plus Enterprise — confirming the model held stable through Q4 2025. (archive)
- Oct 28, 2025 · Price change · Relay.app — Upward reprice (visible by Oct 2025, unchanged Jan 2026): Pro $9->$19/mo, Team $59->$69/mo with 10 users; annual discount 20%->50%; paid-tier AI credit grants raised to 5,000/mo but Pro steps cut 1,500->750; full top-up ladder published (10K AI credits=$19 ... 1,000,000=$1,199; step ladder to 1,000,000). Same hard-allotment mechanics. (archive)
- Oct 14, 2025 · Policy change · Canva AI (Magic Studio AI allowance) — Canva publishes a dedicated 'Understanding AI usage limits' help page (first Wayback capture) consolidating the per-feature caps into a single POOLED monthly AI allowance shared across all premium AI tools, with qualitative tiers (Free limited / Pro-Teams high / Enterprise higher) and a note that 'options for more access' are coming soon. (archive)
- Sep 24, 2025 · Meter adopted · Emergent — Launch-day pricing bundle (app.emergent.sh) confirms the credit meter and tier numbers: Standard $20/100cr, Pro $200/750cr, Team $300/1250 shared, Enterprise 'Unlimited credits & higher limits' — i.e. the product was born metered at a hard allotment (rung 3). (archive)
- Sep 23, 2025 · Meter adopted · Descript — Pricing overhaul: transcription-hours and 'unlimited AI' replaced by two depletable, no-rollover meters — media minutes + AI credits (Studio Sound 10 credits, dubbing 15/min, etc.); legacy users given 30 days' notice before forced migration.
- Sep 8, 2025 · Credit burn-rate repricing · Relevance AI — Blog announced splitting the single credit into Actions + Vendor Credits ('no markup... you pay the model's exact cost'), effective for existing customers after 2025-12-01 — a re-denomination of the meter itself.
- Sep 1, 2025 · Policy change · Copy.ai — Self-serve tier consolidation (occurred between the Jun 2, 2025 snapshot showing Free/Starter/Advanced and the Sep 2, 2025 snapshot showing none of them): Free, Starter $49, and Advanced $249 dropped; entry point replaced by a flat un-metered 'Chat' plan at $29/mo (5 seats, unlimited words, NO workflow credits). Metered Growth/Expansion/Scale tiers retained — no change to the credit-allotment mechanic. (archive)
- Sep 1, 2025 · Meter adopted · Gamma — Credit meter bolted onto paid plans: the official credits help doc now states that on paid plans standard presentations/images are 'included' (fair-use floor) but the plan's monthly credits are consumed by Agent, Ultra/advanced AI models, and API access — i.e. premium AI now sits behind a hard monthly credit allotment (Plus 1,000). Earliest archived snapshot of this hybrid model. (archive)
- Aug 27, 2025 · Credit burn-rate repricing · Make — Make replaced 'operations' with 'credits' as the billing unit at a 1:1 conversion with no change to plan price; standard modules stayed 1 credit/run, but AI-native modules and code execution now consume credits at variable rates (Make Code = 2 credits/sec; Make AI Provider tiers e.g. 5,000 tokens/credit small, 3,500 medium, 1,500 large) — same dollar price, higher credit burn for AI/code work.
- Aug 18, 2025 · Policy change · Synthesia — Official Synthesia Updates post 'Introducing credits instead of minutes' (timestamp 1755526393549 = 2025-08-18) replaced the minutes unit with a credits currency at 120 credits per minute (2 credits/second), spanning all AI usage-based features; self-serve runs out -> 'upgrade your plan to unlock more credits', Enterprise -> contact CSM to buy more, i.e. same hard-allotment mechanics under a new, broader meter unit.
- Aug 7, 2025 · Policy change · n8n Cloud — Official 'new pricing' announcement: removed active-workflow/step/user limits ('unlimited workflows, steps, and users'), repriced the entire platform purely on workflow executions, and introduced the Business plan — shifting the gate from a workflow-count ceiling to a pure execution meter.
- Jul 23, 2025 · Credit burn-rate repricing · Lovable — Lovable moved from a flat 1-credit-per-message model to COMPLEXITY-WEIGHTED credit consumption (a simple style change ~0.5 credits, a landing-page build ~2.0+ credits) at unchanged dollar prices — credit-cost-per-action repricing that drew community backlash (r/lovable, r/nocode).
- Jul 2, 2025 · Credit burn-rate repricing · Replit — Effort-based pricing began rolling out to existing Core and Teams subscribers (starting ~July 1-2), changing credit-cost-per-action while leaving the subscription dollar prices and the pay-as-you-go overage mechanic unchanged.
- Jul 1, 2025 · Policy change · Bolt — Dated public policy note: 'Starting July 1, 2025, tokens roll over for one additional month'; paid tokens consumed FIFO (oldest rollover buckets first). Confirmed at the 2026-06-12 capture.
- Jun 18, 2025 · Meter adopted · GitHub Copilot — GitHub Copilot added a premium-request meter: paid plans get a monthly allowance of premium requests, each model carrying a multiplier (heavier models deduct more), with usage-based billing beyond the allowance. Began 2025-06-18 on GitHub.com (2025-08-01 on GHE.com). Wayback confirms the before-state — the Jan-2024 plans page was flat per-seat ($10 Individual) with no usage meter. (archive)
- Jun 18, 2025 · Credit burn-rate repricing · Replit — Replit announced Effort-Based Pricing, replacing the flat $0.25/checkpoint with a dynamic per-request cost reflecting compute and time — Agent now creates at most one checkpoint per request, costs ranging roughly $0.06 to several dollars; enabled immediately for new users.
- Jun 17, 2025 · Policy change · Adobe Firefly (generative credits) — Worldwide enforcement of credit limits hardens: new subscribers' monthly allotment cut to 25 credits (vs 500/1,000 for pre-June-17 subscribers); at the limit users hit a paywall and must wait for reset or buy an add-on — a hard stop, no auto-billed overage.
- Jun 17, 2025 · Meter adopted · Surfer — Surfer launched AI Tracker as a separately-metered add-on bolted onto the seat product — $95/mo for 25 AI-search-visibility prompts, $195/mo for 100, $495/mo for 300, scaling by prompt count; a usage-priced meter on top of the credit allotments.
- Jun 16, 2025 · Credit burn-rate repricing · Cursor — Official: Pro moves from request limits to compute/dollar limits — $20 of model inference at API prices/month; Ultra ($200/mo, 20x usage) launched; 'Auto' model made unlimited but everything else metered. Same $20 price, but effective coverage roughly halved and the unlimited-slow safety net was removed for frontier models — overage now auto-bills at API rates in arrears.
- Jun 1, 2025 · Meter adopted · HubSpot Credits (Breeze) — Between June 2-15, 2025 HubSpot consolidated separate Breeze Intelligence Credits into a single 'HubSpot Credits' pool with per-tier monthly allotments (Starter 500 / Pro 3,000 / Ent 5,000) and two overage modes -- auto-upgrade capacity packs at $10 per 1,000 credits AND opt-in pay-as-you-go overage at $0.010/credit billed monthly in arrears in increments of 10, moving the meter from a hard prepaid pack to auto-billing metered overage.
- May 15, 2025 · Price change · Adobe Firefly (generative credits) — Creative Cloud price increase: All Apps becomes 'Creative Cloud Pro' at $69.99/mo (up from $59.99) with unlimited standard generations + 4,000 premium credits/mo (up from 1,000); CC Standard at $54.99/mo with 25 credits/mo. Dollar price and meter both move, but the hard-allotment mechanic is unchanged.
- May 15, 2025 · Price change · Agentforce (Flex Credits) — Salesforce overhauls Agentforce pricing: Flex Credits at $0.10 per standard action (20 credits/action, $500 per 100,000 credits) replaces the coarse $2/conversation unit as the recommended meter, re-granularizing usage pricing after conversation-model backlash; Flex Payment Models (pay-as-you-go / pre-commit / pre-purchase) introduced. Bundled alongside per-user licensing alternatives (Agentforce add-on / Agentforce 1 Editions from $550/user/mo).
- May 14, 2025 · Credit burn-rate repricing · Instantly — Official changelog 'SuperSearch is here' announces a 'New Credit-Based System' that re-denominates the lead/data meter from 'verified leads' to abstract 'Instantly credits' with variable burn: 1 credit = verified email via Instantly, 2+ = verified email via partner, 0.5 = AI enrichment — same unit now varies in cost per action instead of one flat 'verified lead'.
- May 13, 2025 · Policy change · v0 — Official 'Updated v0 pricing' blog: v0 switched from fixed message counts to token-metered dollar credits — 'Usage is now metered on input and output tokens which convert to credits.' Included credits: Free $5, Premium $20, Team $30/user per month; credits consumed by input+output tokens; Premium/Team/Enterprise can purchase additional credits (expire after 1 year). This is the soft-meter (rung 2) → hard-allotment (rung 3) move.
- May 1, 2025 · Meter adopted · Figma — Figma introduced its AI credit meter: Full seats get 3,000 credits/mo (Professional) up to 4,250 (Enterprise), while Dev/Collab/View seats are capped at 500/mo; admins can buy +5,000 shared credits from $120/mo, with pay-as-you-go arriving Q2 2026. Wayback confirms the before-state — Figma's Jan-2024 pricing page was seat-only ($12 Professional / $45 Organization) with no AI meter. (archive)
- May 1, 2025 · Policy change · Notion AI (Notion credits) — Notion retires the standalone AI add-on for new Free/Plus users and bundles AI into Business/Enterprise seats; Business annual price rises ~$15 to $20/member (existing add-on subscribers grandfathered), keeping AI flat-per-seat with fair-use.
- Apr 21, 2025 · Credit burn-rate repricing · Windsurf (Devin Desktop) — Windsurf retired the dual-credit system (eliminated Flow Action credits): users now charged 1 prompt credit per message regardless of internal steps; Pro $15/500 credits, Free $0/25, Teams $30/500-per-user, Enterprise $60/1,000-per-user; add-on credits $10/250; opt-in auto-refill (configurable max spend) auto-tops-up = metered overage.
- Apr 9, 2025 · Policy change · Rovo (AI credits) — Atlassian bundles Rovo free into Premium/Enterprise cloud plans (Standard later in 2025), retiring the standalone $24/$20-per-user price and offering Rovo to non-subscribers at $5/user/month — a commercial repackaging that left the soft meter intact (rung 2).
- Apr 3, 2025 · Price change · Devin — Devin 2.0: Cognition adds a no-minimum pay-as-you-go 'Core' plan with a $20 starting minimum at $2.25/ACU (a hike from $2.00 on the $500 Team plan), cutting the entry barrier ~96% while keeping the $500/mo Team plan and the metered-overage model.
- Apr 1, 2025 · Meter adopted · Genspark — Genspark launched Super Agent and its paid plans (Plus ~$24.99/mo with 10,000 credits/month; Pro ~$249.99/mo with 125,000 credits/month; Free 100 credits/day) — a credit meter for agent actions paired with marketed 'unlimited' chat at zero credit cost, i.e. a soft meter from birth.
- Apr 1, 2025 · Policy change · Relay.app — March 2025 update added per-workflow/per-run Step & AI-credit usage tracking columns (visibility only) — no pricing, limit, or exhaustion-behavior change.
- Mar 31, 2025 · Meter adopted · Manus — Manus exits free invite-only beta and launches credit-metered paid plans: Starter $39/mo (3,900 monthly credits, 2 concurrent tasks) and Pro $199/mo (19,900 credits, 5 concurrent tasks); free users get 1,000 credits. Born as a hard allotment — credits reset monthly, do not roll over, and paid subscribers can buy top-up packs.
- Mar 11, 2025 · Policy change · Hugging Face Hub — HF enabled pay-as-you-go via its Billing API for providers fal, Novita and HF-Inference: usage beyond the included monthly credits is charged to your HF account, turning the credit allotment into auto-billed metered overage.
- Mar 1, 2025 · Credit burn-rate repricing · Hugging Face Hub — After PAYG went live, users reported sharp effective-cost jumps once over the included credits — e.g. ~10x per-request increase (690 requests = $6.38 vs prior 569 requests = $0.54) and image inference rising from ~$0.005 to ~$0.05 each starting March 24, 2025 — surfacing the metered-overage bite.
- Feb 1, 2025 · Meter adopted · monday AI (AI credits) — monday AI introduced a credit meter as an overlay on the seat business: 500 free AI credits per month per account, 1 credit per successful AI action, with a soft landing where AI actions keep running after credits are depleted (incentivizing upgrades rather than hard-blocking).
- Jan 28, 2025 · Meter adopted · Hugging Face Hub — Hugging Face launched Inference Providers (fal, Replicate, SambaNova, Together AI) on the Hub, introducing explicit monthly inference credits — PRO users get $2/month of credits — replacing the old rate-limited 'included serverless inference' with a credit-allotment model.
- Jan 1, 2025 · Policy change · Ideogram — Free tier tightened to 10 slow credits per WEEK (down a prior path of 25/day to 20/day to 10/day to 10/week) and slow-queue wait extended from a ~2-minute cap to up to ~20 minutes per generation, reportedly without prior announcement; allotment hardened but model unchanged (no overage billing introduced).
2024 (13 events)
- Dec 17, 2024 · Meter adopted · Clay — Clay's pricing is a single-currency credit meter with a hard ceiling: Free (100 credits/mo), Starter $149, Explorer $349, Pro $800; credits granted upfront, roll over up to 2x, 'unlimited USERS' (seats, not credits) — establishes the rung-3 hard-allotment baseline carried into Jan 2025. (archive)
- Dec 6, 2024 · Meter adopted · Windsurf (Devin Desktop) — Codeium/Windsurf launched Cascade credit metering: Pro $15/mo with 500 premium User Prompt credits + 1,500 Flow Action credits; users could buy more at $10/300 credits with monthly rollover; Free tier (5+5 credits) could NOT buy more (hard stop). (archive)
- Dec 1, 2024 · Policy change · Bardeen — Bardeen 'Pricing 2.0' takes effect: every action normalized to cost exactly 1 credit (previously variable per action), unlimited team seats added, and workflow testing made free/unlimited so users only spend credits once an automation works as expected; migrating Pro customers offered double credits + 50% off for two years.
- Dec 1, 2024 · Meter adopted · Replit — Replit Agent v1 came out of beta charging a flat $0.25 per checkpoint as overage on top of the Core subscription's monthly credit allotment, establishing the metered-overage (rung 4) model: small edits cost $0.25, larger tasks triggered multiple $0.25 checkpoints.
- Nov 6, 2024 · Policy change · Zendesk AI agents — Existing accounts are transitioned onto the automated-resolutions model, with unused Answer Bot resolutions / MAUs converted into the new automated-resolution unit — completing the seat/MAU-to-outcome migration for the installed base.
- Sep 26, 2024 · Meter adopted · Relay.app — Relay introduced free monthly AI credits as a second meter on top of its existing step meter (500 free AI credits/mo on Free), spanning GPT/Gemini/Claude/DALL-E; run-out resolved by topping up via the billing page.
- Sep 12, 2024 · Meter adopted · Agentforce (Flex Credits) — Agentforce reaches GA (announced Dreamforce Sept 2024) priced at $2 per conversation, pay-as-you-go, with a conversation spanning multiple agent actions in a 24-hour window — the originating usage meter.
- Sep 9, 2024 · Policy change · Recraft — Official blog 'Recraft's Pricing Update': switch to credit-based subscriptions.
- Aug 28, 2024 · Meter adopted · Zendesk AI agents — Zendesk announces outcome-based pricing for AI agents — billing per 'automated resolution' (a customer issue resolved autonomously by AI with no live-agent intervention, LLM-verified), positioning itself as first in CX to price on outcomes rather than seats or interactions; each Suite/Support plan includes a starter allotment of free resolutions.
- Aug 1, 2024 · Meter adopted · ElevenLabs — ElevenLabs introduced its structured subscription tiers (Starter/Creator/Pro/Scale/Business), each a credit (character) allotment, with opt-in 'usage based billing for additional credits' on Creator and above — a postpaid overage meter that keeps running above the included credits and auto-bills.
- Jul 5, 2024 · Policy change · Leonardo.Ai — Leonardo introduced Token Rollover for paid plans: unused Fast Tokens bank into a 'Rollover Bank' capped at ~3x the monthly allotment (Essential 25,500 / Premium 75,000 / Ultimate 180,000 max), softening the monthly hard ceiling without removing it. Announced 2024-07-05.
- Jun 1, 2024 · Meter adopted · Canva AI (Magic Studio AI allowance) — Canva's Magic Studio AI ships with per-feature hard monthly caps bundled into the seat: Canva Pro/Teams get 500 Magic Write uses/month and 500 Magic Media (text-to-image) generations/month (Free ~50 lifetime); hit the cap and you are blocked until the monthly reset, with no overage purchase option.
- Jan 8, 2024 · Meter adopted · Zapier — Zapier introduced pay-per-task overage billing: above the plan's task allotment, Zaps keep running and auto-bill each extra task at 1.25x the base per-task rate (capped at 3x the allotment) — moving the core product from a hard task ceiling to metered overage.
Sourced from official pricing pages and archived snapshots; the historical method (and its coverage limits) is on Methodology & data.