AI credits (metered AI)
Definition
AI credits are a unit of account for AI usage in software: each AI action deducts a weighted number of credits from a plan allowance, making consumption visible and capping cost at a known number.
Metered AI prices intelligence the way utilities price power: every AI action draws from an allowance, heavier actions draw more, and the balance is visible. The alternative models — per-seat pricing that ignores usage, per-conversation pricing that treats a one-line answer and a ten-step agent run as equal, or open-ended usage billing — all hide the relationship between what the AI did and what it cost.
Why it matters
The failure mode of AI pricing is the surprise bill. A team turns on an AI feature, usage climbs quietly, and the invoice arrives. The two questions to ask any AI vendor: is every AI action metered through one enforced path (or can some calls bypass the meter), and what happens at the cap — a refusal, or an automatic charge?
How AI credits work in Oneop
Every AI call in Oneop — chatbot replies, agent runs, reply drafts, document OCR, report narration — passes through a single metered routing function before the model is called. There is no unmetered side door, and a build-breaking test in Oneop’s own CI fails if any AI Workforce code makes a direct model call around the meter.
Actions are weighted by cost: a chatbot reply is 1 credit, a copilot query or AI-drafted email 2, document OCR 3, an agent action 5, an executive insight 10. A credit is a unit of AI work, not a message — the weights exist so a heavy action cannot masquerade as a cheap one.
Each plan carries a monthly allowance: 50 credits on Free, 1,000 on Starter, 5,000 on Pro, 15,000 on Business. At the cap, the call is refused with an HTTP 402 — Oneop does not bill overage and does not auto-charge a top-up. Usage is always recorded per workspace; hard cap enforcement is controlled by the deployment’s metering flag. Business plans can bring their own Google AI key and run uncapped against their own account.
One detail that keeps the meter honest: simulated agent runs make no model call and write zero credit-usage rows, so demos never spend your allowance.
Related terms: AI governance, AI agent. See pricing for the full allowance table.
Related terms
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