What’s changing in AI pricing — Strategy of Finance

Our read · edition 2

Edition 2 logs 45 dated pricing moves in its window — 26 policy changes, 8 credit burn-rate reprices, 7 sticker-price changes and 4 new meters. Edition one's read was that the meter only ever tightens. This quarter it moved in both directions, and the direction depended on what the vendor was competing on.

Where the fight is on model price, the burn rate fell. Runway halved what a second of Gen-4.5 costs in credits; Luma halved Seedance 2.0; v0 cut its token rates by up to four-fifths. Those are cost declines passed through to the meter, at an unchanged sticker — the same channel that hides increases, now carrying a cut, and just as invisible to a price tracker. Where the meter got more precise, it tightened. Clay moved token-heavy models to variable pricing, Activepieces began billing each AI call on the dollar cost the provider reports, Make and Rovo replaced flat rates with per-model and per-action tables, and Notion walked a free feature into the meter on a pre-announced date. Same work, more variance in what it costs — and the variance is yours.

Disclosure moved both ways too. Descript, Apollo and Pika put a top-up or pack price on the page that was in-app-only or absent in June; GitHub published Copilot's per-seat credit pools; Zendesk's per-resolution rates sit in the page's own data. Against that, Cursor withdrew its dollar allowances, Figma pulled its pack tiers and per-credit rate from public pages, and Ideogram de-published its free allowance and pack sizes. The stickers that moved went mostly up (Canva, OpenArt, Gamma) with one cut (Replit) and one reprice at an unchanged sticker (Pika: more credits, a redenominated unit, the free tier at zero). Four products added a meter — PhantomBuster, n8n, Intercom's Fin, and eesel, which swapped per-task prices for credit plans — and one left: Relay.app shut down.

What it adds up to: the direction of travel is still toward metering the work and selling the refill, but the price of the work is no longer only rising. Where a vendor competes on model price and that cost is falling, the meter now carries the cut; where it runs its own, the meter gets more precise and less predictable. Either way the sticker tells you less than it did.

Where every product sits on this path, and where it’s headed → The big picture

Our read · edition 1 (75 moves dated up to 2026-06-30)

Up to Edition 1’s cut-off the log holds 75 dated pricing moves across the panel since 2024, a few of them found and back-dated by later sweeps — and read together, they pointed one way. The meter only ever tightened. Almost none of those moves loosened anything; the rest added metering, hardened caps, raised the effective price, or switched on enforcement — a market converging on a single model: meter the work, cap the plan, sell the refill.

The moves fell into four channels. Meter adoptions (22) — an incumbent bolts a credit meter onto a seat product (Figma, GitHub Copilot, Notion), or a new tool ships one at launch. Policy changes (27) — enforcement turned on, free grants shrunk, rollover removed, tiers restructured around credits. Credit burn-rate reprices (16) — the stealth channel: a product raises what you pay by changing how many credits an action costs while the sticker never moves (Cursor, Make, monday). And just 10 were outright sticker-price changes — the loudest, and the least of it. The frozen record is Edition 1.

2026 (65 events)

Oct 10, 2026 · Price change · Gamma — Gamma's Plus plan rose from $10 to $12 per seat per month on monthly billing (annual $108 per seat per year); Pro ($25), Ultra ($100), Team ($20) and Business ($40) were unchanged, and Ultra gained an annual option ($1,080 per seat per year). Dated to confirmation: the change landed between the 12 June and 10 October 2026 captures. USD figures founder-confirmed (Gamma's pricing page localises currency).
Oct 9, 2026 · Policy change · Emergent — Seen at the 9 October 2026 capture: Emergent's top-up ladder now runs from 250 credits ($50) to 10,000+ credits ($2,000) at the same per-credit rate (June: $10 for 50); 'One combined balance' replaces separate credit types. (archive)
Oct 9, 2026 · Credit burn-rate repricing · Dream Machine (Luma) — Seen at the 9 October 2026 capture: Luma halved Seedance 2.0's credit cost between 29 June and 9 October 2026: text- and image-to-video 47 / 107 / 240 credits per second (480p / 720p / 1080p) became 24 / 51 / 126, verified against both archives; Kling 2.6 and Veo 3 were delisted. (archive)
Oct 9, 2026 · Policy change · Magnific — Seen at the 9 October 2026 capture: Magnific added a 'Pro Starter' tier ($110 for 112,500 credits a month) and its docs confirm Premium cannot buy extra credits. (archive)
Oct 9, 2026 · Policy change · Recraft — Seen at the 9 October 2026 capture: Recraft published its top-up prices (packs at 1¢ per credit, 200 credits $2 to 1,600 credits $16); the Free plan is versioned 'free_2026_09'. (archive)
Oct 9, 2026 · Credit burn-rate repricing · v0 — Seen at the 9 October 2026 capture: v0 cut its token rates (Mini $1 / $5 to $0.20 / $1.20 per million tokens; Pro $3 / $15 to $2 / $10), renamed Team to Plus, retired Ultra (with a $200 credit) and gave new Free users a one-time $5. (archive)
Oct 3, 2026 · Meter adopted · eesel AI — eesel AI replaced per-task pay-as-you-go pricing ($0.40 per support ticket or chat, $4.00 per blog post, $50 of free usage) with fixed monthly credit plans: $299 for 500 credits in steps up to 5,000 ($1,899 a month at the 3 October capture, $1,749 by 9 October), one credit per ticket or chat, extra credits $0.80 each. The switch landed between the 20 September and 3 October 2026 captures; eesel's docs still described the old model on 9 October. (archive)
Sep 27, 2026 · Policy change · Relay.app — Relay.app shut down: 'Relay.app shut down in September 2026. All accounts, workflows, and run history have been permanently deleted.' (notice archived 27 September 2026). It leaves the Index's current view; its last record stays in Edition 1. (archive)
Sep 24, 2026 · Credit burn-rate repricing · Activepieces — Activepieces release 0.92.0 stopped charging AI steps a fixed number of credits per model (the pricing page's table: fast model 2, smart 10, frontier 20) and began billing each managed AI call on the dollar cost the provider reports, converted at $0.0005 of model spend per credit by default — so a long call now costs more credits than a short one. The pricing page still showed the per-model table on 9 October. (archive)
Sep 21, 2026 · Policy change · ChatLLM — Seen at the 21 September 2026 capture: Abacus ChatLLM published usage caps (Basic AI Studio caps; SuperComputer 1 credit per 5 minutes on Pro) and states '10K credits cost $10 … you can always buy more'. (archive)
Sep 21, 2026 · Policy change · Adobe Firefly — Seen at the 21 September 2026 capture: Adobe's '30% off first year' promotion ended and 'Generate music' joined the features metered by generative credits (a new first-year promotion, ending 21 October, was live on 12 October). (archive)
Sep 21, 2026 · Policy change · Apollo — Seen at the 21 September 2026 capture: Apollo unified its credit types into one credit (a phone number costs 8 credits, the dialer 2 credits a minute), published self-serve top-up tiers on the pricing page, and raised the annual saving from 20% to 24%. (archive)
Sep 21, 2026 · Policy change · Rovo (AI credits) — Seen at the 21 September 2026 capture: Rovo Standard add-on moved to a free beta (June: $5 for 400 credits); Rovo Dev gains a Free tier (350 credits) and a 30-day trial. Default-on extra-usage billing at $0.01 per credit is announced for 3 December 2026 and will be logged when in force. (archive)
Sep 21, 2026 · Policy change · Bolt — Seen at the 21 September 2026 capture: Bolt's annual discount headline moved from 10% to 'Save up to 28% with yearly billing' (tier-dependent; the docs still say 10%). (archive)
Sep 21, 2026 · Policy change · Canva AI (Magic Studio AI allowance) — Seen at the 21 September 2026 capture: Canva restated the AI allowance in Premium-tool uses (Free 20, Pro 200, Business 400) and stopped metering Standard tools on paid plans; June's figures (200 / 2,000 / 4,000) counted Standard-tool uses, so the series restarts here. (archive)
Sep 21, 2026 · Price change · Canva AI (Magic Studio AI allowance) — Seen at the 21 September 2026 capture: Canva raised month-to-month prices between 27 August and 21 September 2026: Pro US$15 to US$18, Business US$20 to US$25 (yearly US$144 and US$250); the 27 August newsroom post still showed US$20. Business gained one-time AI top-ups, priced in-app only. (archive)
Sep 21, 2026 · Credit burn-rate repricing · Clay — Seen at the 21 September 2026 capture: Clay moved token-intensive models to variable pricing: 'Token intensive models (e.g., GPT-5.1 and Claude 4.6 Sonnet) now have variable pricing based on actual token consumption … no markup'; auto top-ups now carry caps ('4× your monthly Data Credit allocation', '$1,000 … $5,000 … rolling 7-day window'). (archive)
Sep 21, 2026 · Policy change · Cursor — Seen at the 21 September 2026 capture: Cursor withdrew its dollar allowances ('Every plan includes a set amount of model usage' replaces the $20 / $70 / $400 figures), introduced a 'Cursor Token Rate of $0.25 per million tokens' on Teams and Enterprise, added a 'Start (India only) ₹649/mo' plan and 'Save 20% with yearly billing'. (archive)
Sep 21, 2026 · Policy change · Descript — Seen at the 21 September 2026 capture: Descript published its credit-pack prices (350 credits $35, 1,000 credits $80, 4,000 credits $200) and dropped the bonus credits and hours. (archive)
Sep 21, 2026 · Policy change · ElevenLabs — Seen at the 21 September 2026 capture: ElevenLabs withdrew overage billing for new self-serve customers: usage beyond the plan is prepaid pay-as-you-go that pauses at $0 ('PAYG replaces the previous usage based billing (overage) model for new self-serve customers'), with a 12-month expiry on prepaid balances. (archive)
Sep 21, 2026 · Policy change · Figma — Seen at the 21 September 2026 capture: Figma's pay-as-you-go AI billing is live 'up to a monthly spending limit', but the pack tiers and the per-credit rate were withdrawn from public pages ('at the pay-as-you-go rate in place at the time'); the burn table is dated 'as of August 25, 2026'. (archive)
Sep 21, 2026 · Policy change · GitHub Copilot — Seen at the 21 September 2026 capture: GitHub published the Copilot Business and Enterprise credit pools per seat: '$19 USD 1,900 / $39 USD 3,900'. (archive)
Sep 21, 2026 · Policy change · Hugging Face Hub — Seen at the 21 September 2026 capture: Hugging Face re-scoped the bundled credits from Inference Providers only to 'all Hugging Face compute services'. (archive)
Sep 21, 2026 · Policy change · Ideogram — Seen at the 21 September 2026 capture: Ideogram de-published the free weekly allowance ('may vary') and the pack sizes; the annual headline moved from 30% to 33% off; purchased credits now expire a year from purchase. (archive)
Sep 21, 2026 · Meter adopted · Fin — Seen at the 21 September 2026 capture: Intercom added a Fin Pro add-on: '$99/month … 2,000 credits per month … additional credits at $0.01 per credit' — a second, credit-denominated meter beside the per-outcome price. (archive)
Sep 21, 2026 · Policy change · Lovable — Seen at the 21 September 2026 capture: Lovable moved to one credit balance, 'rolling out gradually': the separate Cloud and AI dollar grants become credits (20 + 4 a month). (archive)
Sep 21, 2026 · Credit burn-rate repricing · Make — Seen at the 21 September 2026 capture: Make's help page (updated 21 September 2026) publishes per-model tokens-per-credit rates (gpt-5-nano 18,080 input / 2,260 output; gpt-5-mini 3,616 / 452) in place of June's flat 5,000 / 1,500. (archive)
Sep 21, 2026 · Price change · Make — Seen at the 21 September 2026 capture: Make's Core / Pro / Teams ladder returned (10,000 credits at $10.59 / $18.82 / $34.12 month-to-month; $9 / $16 / $29 annual) in place of June's single 'Make Plan' at $9 for 5,000 credits; the credit slider's floor rose from 5,000 to 10,000. (archive)
Sep 21, 2026 · Policy change · monday.com — Seen at the 21 September 2026 capture: monday.com shows AI-credit buckets on the plan cards ('1,000 credits = $10') with a 'Special monthly discount' that nets to zero on yearly billing; the Enterprise allowance of 20,000 credits was removed from the page. (archive)
Sep 21, 2026 · Meter adopted · n8n Cloud — Seen at the 21 September 2026 capture: n8n added a second meter to the pricing page: AI Assistant credits (2,300 a month on Starter, up to 13,700 on Pro), with no rollover, alongside the execution meter. (archive)
Sep 21, 2026 · Price change · Notion — Seen at the 21 September 2026 capture: Notion added an annual credit SKU at '$13 per 1,000 credits' beside the monthly $10; credits now cover premium models and usage beyond the allowance; the Workers credit start moved from 11 August to 15 October. (archive)
Sep 21, 2026 · Price change · OpenArt — Seen at the 21 September 2026 capture: OpenArt raised Plus (formerly Advanced) from $29 to $34 month-to-month, renamed its plans Starter / Plus / Pro, gated the Extra Credit add-on to Plus and above, and ran 'UNLIMITED videos with Flux 3 720p Until October 31' on Wonder. (archive)
Sep 21, 2026 · Price change · Pika — Seen at the 21 September 2026 capture: Pika repriced between 13 and 21 September 2026 at unchanged prices: the unit became 'credits', allowances rose (700 to 900, 2,300 to 3,150, 6,000 to 8,550 at $10 / $35 / $95), Free dropped from 80 credits to 0 ('packs only'), a pack ladder was published ('60 credits per $1 on every plan') and the Fancy slider runs to $880. Standard and Pro were renamed Starter and Creator. (archive)
Sep 21, 2026 · Price change · Replit — Seen at the 21 September 2026 capture: Replit cut Core from $25 to $20 month-to-month with included credits reduced from $25 to $20; the annual discount became 'Up to 10% off' (was 20% / 5%); a 'Free Mode' and auto-reload for credit packs were added (docs dated 30 August and 18 September 2026). (archive)
Sep 21, 2026 · Policy change · Agentforce (Flex Credits) — Seen at the 21 September 2026 capture: Agentforce lists a 'Help Agent Resolutions $ 2' per-resolution SKU, makes 30 Flex Credits per voice action official, and states 'no overage penalty … contracted rate billed monthly in arrears'; June's 100,000 complimentary Flex Credits are no longer readable. (archive)
Sep 21, 2026 · Policy change · Synthesia — Seen at the 21 September 2026 capture: Synthesia now offers self-serve top-ups ('you can either top-up your credits on your account or to upgrade'; June: upgrade or wait); Enterprise plans do not consume credits. (archive)
Sep 21, 2026 · Policy change · Udio — Seen at the 21 September 2026 capture: Udio's credit packs are on the pricing page: 'Purchase 100 credits - $3.00', 'Purchase 1000 credits - $25.00'; purchased credits never expire. (archive)
Sep 20, 2026 · Credit burn-rate repricing · Runway — Runway halved Gen-4.5's credit cost per second between 10 June and 20 September 2026: '12 credits per second', so 625 credits buy 52 seconds (June: 25 seconds). Verified against the June archive. The site moved to runway.com; Team is $69 per seat per month. (archive)
Sep 20, 2026 · Policy change · Zendesk AI agents — Zendesk's per-resolution rates appear in the pricing page's own data: committed $1.50, pay-as-you-go $2.00; the Suite Enterprise + Copilot price is present but hidden. (archive)
Sep 18, 2026 · Policy change · Genspark — Genspark introduced a weekly 'Free Quota' at no credit cost before monthly credits are drawn, and grandfathered unlimited chat and image use 'through December 31, 2026'. (archive)
Sep 16, 2026 · Policy change · HubSpot — HubSpot changed what happens at the credit limit: 'If you purchased additional HubSpot Credits on or after Sept. 16, 2026, pay-as-you-go is the default setting' (before: automatic upgrade to a capacity pack), with a spend limit set 50% above the monthly credits by default. (archive)
Aug 31, 2026 · Credit burn-rate repricing · Rovo (AI credits) — Rovo's credit table changed from 31 August 2026 ('pricing in the table below applies … starting August 31, 2026'): Basic actions 10 credits per event, Premium actions variable, Teamwork Graph and MCP calls 1–10 credits; the fixed 100-credit Deep Research line is gone. (archive)
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.
Jul 21, 2026 · Meter adopted · PhantomBuster — PhantomBuster added URL Finder and CAPTCHA credit meters (blog, 21 July 2026) and sells credit-pack top-ups for the credit meters at prices that are not published. (archive)
Jul 17, 2026 · Policy change · Instantly — Instantly added credit tiers by 17 July 2026: 'Nano credits $9/month 150' and a '$425/month/add-on 50,000' credit add-on for Hyper and above. (archive)
Jun 28, 2026 · Credit burn-rate repricing · Magnific — Magnific began moving specific models off "Unlimited" onto the metered credit currency on Premium+/Business plans: Nano Banana Pro, Nano Banana 2, Flux.2 Flex, Flux.2 Max, GPT Image 1.0 and GPT Image 1.5 now consume credits rather than being unlimited (existing subscribers keep unlimited access until their next renewal). US list prices were unchanged (Premium $20, Premium+ $45, Pro $280). The notice was already on the pricing page in the 8 May 2026 capture. Corrected 2026-10-09: this entry first described a reprice that was a Canadian-dollar rendering of the page.
Jun 27, 2026 · Price change · Recraft — Recraft restructured its credit ladder (old ladder archived 2026-05-31, new confirmed 2026-06-27): the Advanced tier ($33/4,000 cr) was dropped, Pro was rebased from $60/8,400 cr down to a $20/2,000-cr base (volume-selectable 2k/4k/8k/16k), and a Teams tier was added at $22/seat for 2,000 cr/seat; Basic held at $12/1,000 cr. Annual discount 20%; the hard-allotment mechanics are unchanged. (archive)
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 18, 2026 · Policy change · Zendesk AI agents — Zendesk moved AI agents to automated-resolution tiers from 18 May 2026: 'Your account is automatically credited with a resolution allowance, from which the cost of the automated resolutions is drawn'; only verified resolutions draw on it. (archive)
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 (42 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 29, 2025 · Price change · Udio — Udio raised plan allotments on 29 October 2025 (article dated 17 February 2026): Standard 1,200 to 2,400 credits, Pro 4,800 to 6,000; downloads were disabled. (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.