Understanding how credits work

Credits are the billing unit for monitoring in KI Score. This article explains what a credit covers, how many credits a run uses, which features stay free, and when credits are refunded or expire.

A credit in plain terms

One credit covers one of your own prompts, sent to one AI provider in one run:

1 credit = 1 prompt × 1 AI provider × 1 run

Only monitoring uses credits, meaning the measurement of your own prompts. A run starts automatically on your schedule or manually via Einmal messen (Measure once) in Zeitplan (Schedule).

Note: The glossary in the dashboard describes a credit as one prompt with one AI provider “on one day” (“an einem Tag”). Billing, however, is per run. If you start several runs on the same day, each one costs credits again.

What a run costs

The cost of a run comes down to two numbers:

Credits per run = active prompts × selected AI providers

• There’s no prompt limit per plan. Each website can have up to 500 active prompts, so a run measures at most 500 prompts.
• Your plan caps the number of AI providers: 3 on Essential and Advanced, 5 on Premium, and no limit on Enterprise.
• Paused prompts cost nothing.

How much your monitoring uses each month depends on your schedule. Here is an example with 20 active prompts and 2 AI providers, which comes to 40 credits per run:

Any extra manual runs are added on top. Credits are deducted before a run starts. If your balance is too low, the run does not start.

What doesn't use credits

You can use these features without spending credits:

• KI Score measurements of your markets
• KI-Readiness
• Fanouts, the analysis of the web searches in your monitoring answers
• Questions to Tactics AI. They have their own allowance per calendar month and workspace: 30 questions on Essential, 100 on Advanced, and 300 on Premium and Enterprise, or more by Enterprise contract.
• Reports, their email delivery, and public links
• PDF and CSV exports
• Prompt and competitor suggestions
• Topics and tags
• Saving your schedule

Only monitoring runs cost credits.

Plan credits and bonus credits

Plan credits are your plan’s allowance for one billing period: 150 on Essential, 500 on Advanced, and 1,000 on Premium. Enterprise gets a custom allowance as agreed. The trial also includes 150 credits. Unused plan credits expire at the end of the period and do not carry over.

Bonus credits are granted separately and only by the KI Score team. They never expire and are only used once your plan credits are gone. They are not a route you can use to get more credits.

Credits cannot be purchased. You only get more credits with a new billing period or a larger plan. For an overview of the plans, see the plans page.

Refunds for failed runs

You pay for what was delivered: one credit per delivered answer stays charged. If a run never starts, KI Score returns the credits it deducted in advance in full. If an AI provider doesn’t deliver an answer for some prompts, the credits for exactly those answers are returned, even if the rest of the run succeeds. Refunds go back to the allowance the credits came from, either plan credits or bonus credits.

To see usage and refunds:

1. Open Einstellungen → Billing (Settings → Billing).
2. Select the Nutzung (Usage) tab.
3. Review the individual entries in the Credit-Log (credit log). Usage appears as “Prompt-Lauf” (prompt run), and refunds as “Erstattung” (refund).