Credits
Your AI credit balance — buying credits, how long they last, what spends them, and how to see where they went. Plus where email credits live.
Credits are the unit AI work is metered in across ESTAGE. Building in the chat, the AI Agent, generated images and video, AI on your published site and other AI features all spend from one balance on your account. You buy them as you need them.
Your balance lives under Settings → Allocation & credits in your account settings; what you've spent is under Settings → Usage. Your balance also shows in the profile menu of Genesis and the Welcome Hub — select it to go straight to Allocation & credits.
Checking your balance
Allocation & credits opens on AI credits: the Credits remaining card shows your total. While it loads it shows a dash, not 0 — a real 0 means it's time to top up.
Buying credits
- Open Settings → Allocation & credits.
- On the Credits remaining card, select Add credits.
- Under Choose a pack, pick one: 1K, 3K, 10K (marked Most popular) or 35K credits. Or open Custom amount and choose any amount from 1,000 to 100,000 credits.
- Check the total under You'll pay.
- Pick a Payment method — a saved card, or Add a card to save a new one to your account.
- Select Pay — the button shows the total.
Payment goes through Stripe. The credits are added within moments and the balance refreshes; the purchase also shows under Billing & invoices.
How long credits last
- Bought credits are valid for 12 months from purchase. Each purchase is its own batch with its own end date; when a batch reaches it, whatever is left of it expires.
- Credits included with a monthly credits plan are spent first, then bought credits, oldest end date first — so the batch closest to expiring is always used first.
What spends credits
Every AI action is priced by the work it takes, so a long Agent session costs more than a small edit. The Usage tab groups spending into these categories:
| Category | What it covers |
|---|---|
| AI Builder | Edits and generation in the builder chat, including its suggestions and voice input |
| AI Agent (Ultra, Genius, Smart, Fast) | Agent coding sessions, by tier. Ultra is the most powerful and the most expensive; Fast is the cheapest |
| Blog | AI-written posts and blog setup |
| Funnels | AI funnel generation and audits |
| Site AI assistant | AI on your published site — chatbot, smart forms — used by your visitors and billed to you |
| AI images | Generated images |
| AI video | Generating, dubbing, cleaning and rendering video |
| CRM AI | The CRM assistant and its summaries |
| Localization | Translating your site into other languages |
| Mobile app | Publishing a shareable snapshot of a mobile app |
| Security scans | Deep security scans and one-click fixes |
| Design from reference | Analyzing a reference site for a redesign |
| Dedicated Cloud AI | SQL and function generation in Dedicated Cloud |
| Web fetch | Fetching outside pages for the AI |
| Sent to a team member | Credits you moved to someone on a project |
Coding agents you connect through Integrations run on your own AI subscription, so their work doesn't spend Genesis credits.
Seeing where your credits went
Open Settings → Usage.
- Where your credits go totals what you spent in the last 7d, 30d or 90d, with the number of actions. Switch between By action (the categories above) and By project. Projects that were deleted are grouped together.
- Detailed history lists each charge with its date. Credits that came in — a top-up, trial credits, plan credits, credits from a team member or added by ESTAGE — are in the same list, marked with a +. Small background charges, such as prompt suggestions, are grouped into one line per day. Load more goes further back.
Giving credits to a collaborator
You can move credits from your balance to someone you share a project or folder with — see Members. The move shows in your history as Sent to a team member and in theirs as From a team member.
Email credits
Below AI credits, Allocation & credits has an Email credits section: the email sending quota you buy and assign to projects. It is separate from AI credits — buying one doesn't add to the other. See Your sending allowance.
Things worth knowing
- An AI action checks your balance before it starts. If the balance can't cover it, the action doesn't run and you're told you need more credits.
- Visitors' use of Site AI is billed to you, the owner of the site, not to the visitor.
- For small edits, choose a cheaper tier. The in-app AI Builder and the Smart or Fast Agent tiers cost far less per action than Ultra.