# What Uses Credits [Billing Overview](billing-system.md) explains the credit model. This page is the detailed answer to the question people actually ask: **"why did this conversation cost more than I expected?"** Short version: your AI Quality tier sets the price of **one AI action**, and a single incoming message can produce **more than one** AI action. That is normal, it is not a bug, and every action is written to your usage history as its own line so you can see exactly what happened. --- ## What Counts as One "AI Action" A credit is charged when the AI **thinks**, not when a message is sent or received. One AI action is one call to the AI. The price of one action depends on the AI Quality tier set on the Agent: | AI Quality tier | Credits per action | With your own Anthropic key connected | |---|---|---| | Pro | 1 | 0 | | Economy (deprecated) | 0.5 | 0 | | Max | 0.25 | still 0.25 | | Mini | 0.15 | still 0.15 | Max and Mini run on our own model rather than your key, which is why they still cost credits when you have brought your own key. See [Billing Overview](billing-system.md#what-one-ai-action-costs-by-ai-quality-tier). --- ## Why One Message Can Cost More Than One Action Writing the reply is only one of the jobs the AI does on a conversation. Depending on what you have switched on, the same incoming message can also trigger: | What happens | Shows in your usage history as | When it is charged | |---|---|---| | The AI writes a reply | **AI Message** | Once per reply cycle, however many bubbles the reply is split into | | The AI uses a tool (books an appointment, checks your calendar, alerts a human, schedules a follow-up, searches your website or the web, runs one of your custom functions) | **AI Tool Use: _tool name_** | Once per tool call, on top of the reply | | The AI decides whether to stay quiet on a message that does not need an answer | **AI Chat Ignore Evaluation** | Only when it actually decides to stay quiet | | The AI decides the conversation is finished | **AI Chat Conclude Evaluation** | Only when it actually concludes the chat | | A new message arrives while the AI is mid-reply and it decides whether to restart | **AI Interruption Handling** | Only when a message interrupts a reply | | The AI applies a tag to the contact | **Contact Tag** / **Chat Tag Evaluation** | Once per tag applied | | The AI writes a running summary of a long conversation | **Chat Summary Generation** | On long conversations only | | The AI decides whether a follow-up is needed | **Follow-Up Evaluation** | When follow-ups are enabled on the Agent | | A follow-up message is written and sent | **Follow-up Cycle _n_** | Once per follow-up sent | | The AI pulls a name, email or phone number out of the conversation | **AI First Name Extraction**, **AI Email Extraction**, and similar | When the detail appears in the conversation | | The spam filter checks a first message from a new contact | (no line) | Never, spam filtering is always free | Each of those lines is priced at the same tier rate as the reply itself. So a conversation where the AI answers, books a meeting, tags the contact and decides to conclude is four actions, not one. **This is the single most common billing surprise, and the fix is usually one of these:** - Move the Agent to the **Max** or **Mini** tier. That is the biggest single lever: the same conversation costs a quarter of the Pro price on Max, and less again on Mini. - Turn off the automations you are not using on that Agent, such as auto-tagging and follow-ups. Each one you switch off removes its line from every conversation. - Read the **Model** column in your usage history (see below) before changing anything else. --- ## How to Read Your Usage History **Settings → Billing**, then scroll to **Usage history**. Every credit-consuming action is one row, with the date, the reason, the Agent, the contact, the **Model** column, and the credits charged. The **Model** column is the one to check when a charge looks wrong. It shows the rate the row was actually billed at, not the tier you picked in the editor. If a row reads a different tier than the Agent you set, that is the answer to "why was I charged 1 instead of 0.25", and it is worth sending to [support](mailto:hi@dmchamp.com) with the row's date and contact so we can look at it. To see what a single conversation cost, sort or scan by the contact name in that table: every row for that contact, added up, is that conversation's total. --- ## Monthly Channel Costs Some channels carry a fixed monthly cost because we pay for infrastructure on your behalf. Most do not. | Channel | Monthly cost | Per-message cost | |---|---|---| | A phone number you rent here | At least 50 credits a month; premium numbers cost more. The number's card on **Settings → Channels** shows its exact price | WhatsApp template fees passed through at cost | | WhatsApp Web | 50 credits a month per connected number | None | | WhatsApp connected through our Meta app | 50 credits a month per connection | Meta bills its own message fees to the WhatsApp account directly | | Instagram DMs | None | None | | Facebook Messenger | None | None | | Website chat widget | None | None | | Telegram | None | None | | LINE | None | None | | Viber | None | None | | Email | None | None | | SMS | None from us | Billed by Twilio on your own account, see [SMS Provider](../settings/sms-provider.md) | So the answer to "do Instagram, Messenger and website chat have a monthly channel fee like WhatsApp Web does?" is **no**. Only rented numbers and the two WhatsApp connection types carry one. --- ## Other Things That Use Credits - **Daily Summaries**: one AI action per generated summary, plus one more for each task the summary creates from your conversations. A day with no conversations costs nothing. See [Daily Summaries](../daily-summaries/daily-summaries.md#what-a-summary-costs). - **Broadcasts**: sending is free. There is no per-contact charge for launching a broadcast. You are charged only for the AI replies to people who answer, and for WhatsApp Business API template delivery fees where they apply. See [Billing Overview](billing-system.md#outgoing-campaigns). - **Comment-to-DM**: the public reply and first DM cost one AI action each in AI mode, and **0 credits** in Exact Text mode. See [Comment-to-DM](../ai-automation/comment-to-dm.md#what-it-costs). - **Automations**: 0.25 credits when a run starts, plus 0.25 for each AI step inside it. These are charged even with your own AI key connected. - **Knowledge base generation**: importing a website or a document runs the AI over each chunk of content, and each chunk is an AI action. A large site is the one setup step that can use a noticeable number of credits in one go, so start with the pages that matter rather than a whole domain. - **Understanding incoming media**: voice notes, images and documents a contact sends are read as part of the reply that handles them, at no extra charge. See [Billing Overview](billing-system.md#media-understanding-costs). --- ## A Worked Example A contact messages your WhatsApp Web number three times in a row, asks a question, and books a call. Your Agent is on the Max tier with auto-tagging on. | What happened | Credits | |---|---| | The three messages are batched into one reply cycle | 0.25 | | The AI checks your calendar | 0.25 | | The AI books the appointment | 0.25 | | The AI tags the contact "booked" | 0.25 | | The AI concludes the chat | 0.25 | | **Total for the conversation** | **1.25** | On the Pro tier the same conversation is 5 credits. That difference is why we recommend Max as the default. --- ## Next Steps - [Billing Overview](billing-system.md): the credit model, top-ups, auto-recharge and invoices. - [Plans & Pricing](subscription-tiers.md): what each plan includes. - [AI Model & BYOK](../ai-automation/ai-model-and-byok.md): connecting your own AI key.