Credits and usage
Costs, weekly refreshes, recurring runs and your shared balance.
Credits are how Pro pays for work such as writing articles, checking AI answers or fixing website pages. This page explains what a credit buys, what is free, and how to keep spending under control. Simple has no credits: it is a fixed $49/month.
Why it helps
- You see the price of every paid action before it starts.
- You only pay for work that succeeds. If something fails, its credits go back to you.
- One balance covers all your Pro brands and tools, so you don't juggle separate budgets.
What a credit is worth
Think of credits as prepaid tokens. Pro Starter includes 1,000 credits for $59 a month, which is just under 6 cents a credit. Extra credits cost 6 cents each.
| Everyday example | Credits | Roughly, at 6 cents a credit |
|---|---|---|
| A normal blog article | 15 | $0.90 |
| An article based on a news story, RSS post or YouTube video | 25 | $1.50 |
| One AI question checked on all six AI platforms | 6 | $0.36 |
| One website page checked for SEO problems | 2 | $0.12 |
What uses credits
This is the full price list. Every paid page in the app also has a Credits box that shows the price before you start.
| Action | Credits |
|---|---|
| Standard article: managed, manual or keyword feed | 15 |
| News, RSS or YouTube article (total, not on top of 15) | 25 |
| Track one prompt across all six AI platforms, scheduled or manual | 6 |
| SEO audit, per page successfully checked | 2 |
| SEO Agent, per confirmed fix on your website | 5 |
| Optimize an existing article (write a refreshed version) | 15 |
| Analyze an existing article (check if it needs a refresh) | 2 |
| Feed refresh · all types | 25 |
| Extra full brand research, only after you approve it | 22.5 |
A completed article uses its credits even if you never publish it, including an article kept as Ready for review with notes. YouTube articles work with videos up to 60 minutes long.
What's free
These never use credits:
- Looking around the dashboard and changing settings.
- Brand setup, plus four more brand research updates per billing period.
- Ordinary AI edits to an article, and internal-link improvements.
- Stock images from Pexels, publishing to your website and syncing with your blog.
- Google Search Console reports.
- Creating, sharing and exporting branded client reports. (The tracking and research shown inside a report are charged at their normal rates when they run.)
- Finding your website's pages, the first SEO Agent audit after you install it, checking that fixes worked, and undoing fixes.
- Keeping an up-to-date list of your website's pages so articles can link to them.
- Inviting and managing teammates.
What repeats automatically
Some features keep running on a schedule once you turn them on. Each one shows its repeating cost before you start.
| Feature | How often | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Managed by outwrite.ai feed | Only when its ideas run low | 25 credits per refill |
| Keyword, news, RSS and YouTube feeds | Weekly | 25 credits per refresh |
| AI tracking (Pro) | Every three days | 6 credits per question (1 per platform). Failed platform checks are free. A Google search with no AI Overview still counts as a completed check. |
| Campaigns | On your schedule | The article price for each article completed in a batch |
| SEO Agent scans | Only when you scan, or on the Autopilot schedule you choose | 2 credits per page checked, up to the maximum you approve per run |
| SEO Agent fixes | When a fix is confirmed on your page | 5 credits per fix |
| Existing Content Autopilot | Weekly, if you turn it on | Up to 2 credits per review plus 15 per refresh. The default of 5 articles a week costs at most 85 credits. You can choose 1 to 20 articles a week. |
Simple's managed schedule and its five AI questions never use credits.
Example: what 1,000 credits can do
Here is one way a Pro Starter month could look:
| Work | Credits |
|---|---|
| 30 articles from managed ideas (30 × 15) | 450 |
| 5 AI questions tracked for a month (5 × 6 × about 10 checks) | 300 |
| 2 managed idea refills (2 × 25) | 50 |
| Total | 800 |
That leaves 200 credits for SEO checks, extra articles or anything else. The pricing calculator estimates articles and tracking over 30 days. It doesn't include feed refreshes or other tools, so your in-app quote, which uses your real settings, is the one to trust.
See your balance
Open Account and settings → Billing and scroll to Credits & usage. You can also select the credit balance at the bottom of the Pro sidebar.
| You see | What it means |
|---|---|
| Available | Credits you can spend now. |
| Monthly / trial remaining | What's left of this month's (or your trial's) credits. |
| Purchased remaining | Credits you bought that you haven't used. |
| Reserved for work | Credits set aside for work that is running now. They are used if it succeeds and released if it fails. |
Below that, Usage history lists your latest 100 activities with their status (Reserved, Completed, Included or Released · no charge), and Credit costs lists current prices. Filter the history by brand with All workspaces.
Monthly, trial and purchased credits
- Trial credits: new accounts get 200 credits for seven days and one website. They end when the trial ends or when a paid plan starts.
- Monthly credits: Pro Starter adds 1,000, Pro Growth 3,000 and Pro Agency 10,000 each month. They are used first and expire at the end of the billing period. They don't roll over.
- Purchased credits: top-ups cost 6 cents each, from 100 to 100,000 at a time. They never expire. You need an active Pro plan or trial to use them.
Buy credits or set up automatic top-ups.
Set a spending limit
- Open Account and settings → Billing → Credits & usage and find Spending limit.
- Choose a category: All work, Articles, AI tracking, Site optimization or Research.
- Enter a number of credits and select Save limit. Enter 0 to pause all new paid work in that category.
New paid work pauses once the limit is reached; work already running can finish. Limits last until the date shown and don't renew by themselves. Select Remove limit to clear one.
How charging works
- Before paid work starts, its quoted credits are set aside (Reserved for work).
- If the work succeeds, the credits are used.
- If it fails, the credits are released and you pay nothing.
- If you retry the same work, outwrite.ai reuses saved results instead of charging twice.
SEO fixes set aside 5 credits when you turn them on and are charged only after the fix is confirmed on your live page. Turning off an unconfirmed fix releases its credits.
Common questions
What happens if I run out of credits?
New paid work waits. Nothing you already have is lost. Buy a top-up, wait for your monthly renewal, or upgrade your plan.
Why does my history show an older price?
Work started under an earlier price list keeps its original price. New prices never rewrite your history.
Do teammates have their own credits?
No. Teammates use the brand owner's shared balance. Inviting them is free.
Does Simple ever use credits?
No. Simple is a fixed monthly price. If you're on a Pro plan and switch a brand to Simple, that brand's articles use your Pro balance.
