- Jan 2025 Rung 3 · Hard allotment
- Now Rung 3 · Hard allotment
Held one rung all window — pattern: Incumbent bolt-on.
The short version A usage meter was bolted onto a seat you already pay for — the subscription is no longer the whole bill.
The verdict
Relay.app is a step-metered automation product that bolted an AI-credit meter onto its existing step model in September 2024. Across the window it has run a dual hard-allotment system: every step consumes a step credit, AI steps additionally consume AI credits, and when either meter empties the workflow is blocked until you manually buy a top-up pack — the docs say plainly to purchase more in billing settings, with no auto-billed overage and no fair-use framing. The pricing model never traversed rungs between January 2025 and today; what moved was the dollar level — by October 2025 Pro rose from $9 to $19/mo, Team from $59 to $69, the annual discount doubled to 50%, and the published top-up ladder extended. A stable hard allotment, repriced.
Current pricing snapshot
As published on Relay.app's own pages · captured Jun 12, 2026. Unit: step.
| Plan | Price / mo | Included | At zero | Top-up vs plan |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | Free | 200 | Unstated | None |
| Professional | $19 | 750 | Hard stop | Yes · price hidden |
| Team | $59 | 1,500 | Hard stop | Yes · price hidden |
- Credit ↔ dollar
- Not pegged — a credit is not a fixed $
- Model choice
- You pick the model
- Free tier
- 200 credits, per month
- Billing
- Monthly or annual · 50% off annual
- Included credits
- Unstated
- Purchased credits
- Expire each cycle
What changed
- Oct 28, 2025 · Price change · 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)
- Apr 1, 2025 · Policy change · March 2025 update added per-workflow/per-run Step & AI-credit usage tracking columns (visibility only) — no pricing, limit, or exhaustion-behavior change.
- Sep 26, 2024 · Meter adopted · 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.
Where it's headed
Sourced from Relay.app's official pricing pages and archived snapshots. Primary: pricing page. Method & limits: Methodology & data.