Credits

You pay for Manifold in credits. Each call spends some, a few tools are free, and every result tells you exactly what it cost in meta.credits_charged. What a credit costs you in money depends on how you bought it: each plan has its own rate, and top-ups have theirs. See Plans and top-ups.

What calls cost

A tool's cost follows from what you ask for: how many rows, how many pages, how many engines. Each tool's description states its cost, so your agent knows the price before it calls. Here are some common calls:

Each tool's page lists its cost. These are free: get_task, submit_feedback, seo_get_page, aeo_get_site_readiness, and any call with dry_run: true. The console tools for Search Console and Bing and the Analytics tools cost 0 credits too, because they read your own accounts; they are rate limited per workspace instead.

How a charge is worked out

Manifold never charges more than a call's estimate, and it charges for what actually came back. Each call goes through three steps:

1. Estimate. The server prices the call at the most it can cost, for example the full limit you asked for.
2. Hold. It holds that many credits on your balance. If the balance is too low, the call stops with InsufficientCredits and costs nothing.
3. Settle. After the call, it charges for what came back, such as the rows returned, and never more than the estimate. The rest of the hold is released.

The two async tools do the same, but in the background: starting one always returns a task_id, and if your balance is too low, get_task returns InsufficientCredits when the task runs.

A call that returns data costs at least 1 credit. A call costs nothing when the provider has nothing (NoData), when a provider is down, when Manifold rejects the input, or when too many of your calls are running. See Errors and limits.

An answer from the cache skips the hold and costs 25% of the live price, rounded up, with a minimum of 1 credit. An answer your workspace already paid for is free until it expires.

Cap what a call can spend

Calls spend credits without asking you first, so it is worth giving your agent a budget:

• max_credits refuses any call whose estimate is higher. The result is BudgetExceeded with the estimate, and nothing is charged.
• dry_run: true returns only meta with the estimate. It costs nothing.

For example, this call asks for the top 100 Google results, which costs 10 credits. With max_credits at 5 it is refused with BudgetExceeded, and nothing is charged:

{"keyword": "crm for startups", "depth": 100, "max_credits": 5}

Watch your usage

The app's Usage page lists every call that was charged or served from the cache, with the tool, the target and the credits. Its Tasks tab lists the crawls and AI answer runs, including any that failed. The dashboard shows a month of credits and your balance.

Run out, and top up

When your balance is below a call's estimate, the call returns InsufficientCredits, and your agent should stop and tell you. The message says what the call needed and what the next plan up gives, and the error carries its link in upgrade_url: checkout for Pro on the free plan, or on a paid plan the app's Billing page with the next plan picked, to confirm in one click. next_plan names that plan. On the largest plan, the link is the Billing page, where you add credits or turn on auto top-up. A workspace that can add credits also gets billing_url. On the free plan, resets_at says when the month's free credits come back. In ChatGPT and Codex, whose rules forbid selling in the chat, the error instead carries plans_url, this site's page on plans, and names no plan or price; an email with the upgrade link follows. A cache hit takes no hold, so it can still be served on a low balance. See Plans and top-ups.

Before that, once a day, a result can carry credits_notice in its meta when the balance is low: on the free plan from about a fifth of the month's credits left, on a paid plan from a fifth of the plan's credits left, with the next plan's link. Your agent tells you once and carries on. ChatGPT and Codex get no notice; the email about low credits still comes, on every plan.