Account & Billing
Credits & payments
Inference draws down a prepaid USD balance. Top it up when you need to, there are no subscriptions or minimum commitments.
Your organization has one shared credit balance; every member's usage, SDK, API, and playground alike, is metered per token and drawn from it. New organizations start with a $5 welcome credit, enough to evaluate every model in the catalog before adding a payment.
Adding credits
Top up from the Billing page: Add credits opens a Stripe-hosted checkout, minimum $5, maximum $4,999 per transaction, and card details never touch Pearl's servers. Credits are applied when the payment settles, usually within moments of checkout completing.
- Every top-up, manual or automatic, appears in the Billing page's payment history with its amount, type, and status (including the failure reason when a charge doesn't go through).
- Only billing admins (and org admins) can add credits or manage payment settings, other roles see the balance and are pointed to a billing admin. See Team & roles.
When the balance runs out
An exhausted balance is an account state, not a transient error: API requests are declined with a 402 until you top up (see error handling). Balance changes propagate to the network within about a minute in both directions, running dry and re-funding both take effect quickly.
Running production traffic on a prepaid balance? Turn on auto-recharge, it exists precisely so a busy night doesn't become an outage.
Enterprise (invoiced) accounts
Higher-volume organizations can switch from prepaid to monthly invoicing: usage is metered identically, but instead of topping up, you operate against a credit line and receive an invoice at the start of each month. The Billing page changes accordingly:
| Prepaid (self-serve) | Enterprise (invoiced) |
|---|---|
| Current balance, drawn down as you go | Next invoice amount, accruing as you go |
| Top-ups + auto-recharge | Credit line + next invoice date; pay invoices via the Stripe portal |
| Requests decline when the balance runs out | Usage continues; overage is billed on the monthly invoice |
Interested in invoicing? Reach out through the dashboard's Support tab, the switch is made by our team, not self-serve.