# How SEO lookups are priced in credits

> One credit is $0.0001 of raw vendor cost. It is reserved before an operation runs, settled against what the vendor actually charged, and refused rather than invoiced when a workspace cannot cover it.

Source: https://netweft.com/credits

## A credit is a unit of vendor cost

One credit is $0.0001 of raw vendor cost, so 10,000 credits is exactly $1.00 of vendor spend. The unit is not an invented token with a made-up exchange rate — it is a fixed fraction of a real cost, which is what makes the rate card checkable rather than decorative.

## Reserved first, settled after

Before any paid call goes out, credits are reserved at the rate card's price. The reservation is a ceiling: when the vendor's response comes back, the real charge is read off it and the difference is released. You are never charged more than the number you were shown, and often less.

## Refused, never invoiced

A workspace that cannot cover a call is refused before the vendor is reached, with the shortfall named. Nothing is bought and nothing is charged. There is no overage line on an invoice because there is nothing to overrun — the failure happens at the point of decision rather than at the end of the month. The one exception is auto top-up, on by default: it buys more credits first, at most $60 a day, and can be switched off in billing.

## Two pools, spent in the right order

Plan credits are granted at the start of each billing period and expire at the end of it. Top-up credits are bought with money and never expire, because expiring something somebody paid cash for invites chargebacks. Plan credits are always spent first, so nobody loses credits they could have used.

## Reading is free

Reading anything netweft has already stored costs nothing. Past rank checks, audit results, saved keywords, project overviews and every MCP tool are free, because no vendor call and no crawl happens. Credits are spent only when new data is fetched, a page is crawled, or a model is called.

## Top-ups

- A dollar buys 2,500 top-up credits, with a $10 minimum.
- Bought as top-ups, each plan's monthly credits would cost Pro $50 against $50 for the plan, Studio $112 against $100 for the plan and Agency $240 against $200 for the plan. The plan also buys the platform — the projects, tracking, audits and assistant that credits alone do not — so it is never the dearer way to buy credits, and from Studio up its credits alone cost less than top-ups.
- A trial workspace gets its own credits (Pro 3,000, Studio 5,000 and Agency 8,000), a tighter rate limit, and no auto top-up.