# Top-ups and auto top-up: when to turn it on

> Top-up credits never expire and are spent after plan credits. Auto top-up is on by default with two daily caps. What each setting does, and when to change it.

Source: https://netweft.com/blog/top-ups-and-auto-top-up
Updated: 2026-10-15

**A dollar buys 2,500 top-up credits, from $10 a purchase. They never expire and are spent after plan credits. Auto top-up starts on: under 10% of the allowance it buys $20 more, at most 3 times and $60 a day.**

A workspace holds credits in two pools. Plan credits arrive with each billing
period and expire when it ends. Top-up credits are bought with money and never
expire. Plan credits are always spent first, so a top-up is only touched once
the period's allowance has run out.

## The price of a top-up

A dollar buys 2,500 credits. The smallest purchase is
$10; the dialog offers $10, $20, $50 and $100, and any amount up to
$10,000 can be typed in.

Per credit, no plan is dearer than that. Pro's
125,000 credits would cost the same as the plan if bought as
top-ups, and the plan also buys the platform: the projects, tracking, audits
and assistant that credits alone do not. From Studio up, the
plan is the cheaper way to buy the credits themselves. A workspace that tops
up heavily every month is on the wrong plan; the [pricing sheet](/pricing)
shows where the line falls.

## Auto top-up, as it starts

When a workspace subscribes, auto top-up is on, with these settings:

- **Trigger:** the balance falls below 10% of the plan's
  monthly credits. The trigger is a fraction rather than a fixed count so that
  it means the same thing on every plan.
- **Reload:** $20.
- **At most 3 reloads in any 24 hours.**
- **At most $60 in any 24 hours.**

The two caps are there because auto top-up charges a saved card with nobody
watching. Without them, a runaway script or a leaked key could drain the card;
with them, the worst day is bounded. The defaults are set so that both bite at
the same moment. Reaching a cap pauses auto top-up
and emails the workspace owner.

If a charge is declined, netweft tries once more five minutes later. If that
fails too, auto top-up stops and stays stopped. Retrying a dead card again and
again looks like fraud to card networks, and a card that has expired needs a
person, not another attempt.

## When to leave it on

Leave it on when work is scheduled. A rank tracker set up weeks ago runs
whether or not anyone is looking, and a workspace that runs out of credits is
[refused before anything is bought](/blog/reserve-then-settle). The scheduled
check pauses until credits arrive, and the positions it records are the ones
seen when it resumes, not on the day it was due. A late observation is a gap
in the record that nothing can fill afterwards.

## When to turn it off, or down

- **You are testing something expensive** and would rather it stopped at the
  edge of the allowance than continued.
- **The reload is too large for the month you have.** Lower the amount; the
  minimum is the same $10 as a manual top-up.
- **The trigger is too late for your schedule.** If a large scheduled run can
  spend more than 10% of the allowance in one go, raise the threshold so the
  reload lands before the run rather than after it.

Every one of these values is editable per workspace. The defaults are where a
workspace starts, not a recommendation for every workspace.

## Trials

A trial workspace cannot use auto top-up at all. A trial runs on its own
[trial credits](/blog/spending-a-trial-well), and the point of a trial is to
see the product on a real domain, not to discover a charge.