Billing
One prepaid balance in US dollars, spent at the provider's own price. No markup, no subscription requirement, no credit currency to convert in your head.
Units
Prices and balances are integers in micro-dollars: 1,000,000 units = $1.00. Money never touches floating point, so a fraction of a cent per generation still adds up exactly.
cost_units = 3000 // from GET /api/v1/models usd = 3000 / 1e6 // $0.003 per generation
When you are charged
- At submission the cost is quoted and checked against your balance — not deducted.
- On the transition to completed, the balance is debited once, keyed by generation id so a repeated poll cannot double-charge.
- A failed generation costs nothing. So does a 502 from the provider at submission time.
- Generations paid with your own provider key never touch the ElliSekiz balance.
A request that would overdraw the balance is refused up front with
402 and a message stating the shortfall — you never end up with a negative balance.Adding funds
Top up any amount on the billing page, or take a monthly plan that credits the same balance on each renewal. Plans are a convenience for funding, not a feature gate: every model and every routing mode is available on a one-off top-up.
The ledger behind the balance is append-only, so the billing page shows every purchase and every generation charge with its model, provider and timestamp.