How credits work.
Your monthly allowance, when it resets, what spends it, and what's free. Credits meter the two expensive things — AI writing and competitor scraping. The intelligence is included.
Credits are how ScoutRival meters the expensive parts — the AI writing and the competitor scraping. Everything else is included. This page is the whole model in five minutes.
Your monthly allowance
| Plan | Credits per month |
|---|---|
| Free | 50 |
| Starter | 1,000 |
| Pro | 3,000 |
| Agency | 5,000 |
On Agency, each extra seat you buy adds 1,000 credits to that monthly allowance — and they refill every month like the rest.
When it resets
Your allowance refills on your billing date. If you subscribed on the 14th, it refills on the 14th.
The refill happens the first time you touch the app after that date, not at midnight. So if you don't log in for a couple of days, your balance still shows last month's number until you do — and then it corrects itself instantly. Nothing is lost.
No rollover
Unused monthly credits don't carry forward. On the 14th you're back to your full allowance, whether you spent 5 credits last month or 4,995.
There's one exception. Credits from a Lifetime Deal land in a separate bucket that does survive the reset — and we always spend your monthly allowance first, so that reserve is only touched once the month's credits are gone. Your reserve is never quietly eaten.
What actually spends them
Three things, in rough order of how much they matter to your balance:
Your daily brief
2 credits per social post + 2 per blog idea, plus scraping (2 per social platform checked, 2 per competitor blog). At the default 3 posts + 1 blog, that's 8 credits a day before scraping. Full breakdown →
BlogCraft articles
Priced by the length of the finished article, not what you asked for:
| Finished length | Credits |
|---|---|
| Up to 1,500 words | 10 |
| 1,500 – 2,500 | 15 |
| 2,500 – 4,000 | 20 |
| 4,000 – 6,000 | 30 |
| Over 6,000 | 50 |
Re-tuning a passage is 2 credits. Regenerating a title or meta description is 1.
Compose and everything else
- Compose message: 2 credits — including image mode, where you're paying for the prompt
- Prompt Studio: 2 credits, only when the AI pass succeeds
- Regenerating your voice fingerprint: 2 credits, every time
- An extra competitor: 5 credits — but your first five per brand are free
- An extra brand: 20 credits — your first brand is free
- SEO audit: scaled to how many pages it actually reads. Your first audit on each brand is free.
See the full cost breakdown →
What's always free
- The Brand Engine. Building and rebuilding your market intelligence — keywords, gaps, angles — is never metered. It's the part we're proudest of and we don't charge for it.
- The intelligence in your brief — the verdict, your rivals' signals, your next move, the gap board.
- Competitor discovery.
- Titles, outlines, keyword research and entity scans in BlogCraft.
- Exports, share links and publishing.
Running out
Before an expensive action runs, we check you can afford it. If you can't, you'll see a panel telling you what it needed, what you have, and when your credits refresh — with your work preserved in the box so nothing is lost.
Failed work is never charged. The meter runs after a successful result, not before it — so a generation that errors out costs you nothing.
To get more credits you either upgrade your plan, or stop spending them altogether:
Connect your own AI key under AI Models and generation runs on your provider's account at their prices, not ours. Start with OpenRouter →
Changing plan
- Upgrading tops you up to the new allowance immediately — you don't wait for the next billing date.
- Downgrading caps your remaining balance at the new plan's allowance.
- Cancelling drops you to the Free allowance at the end of the period. Nothing you've made is deleted.
Keeping an eye on it
The ring in the top bar is your balance. It turns amber below 20% and red below 5%, and a small toast tells you what each action cost the moment it's charged.
For the detail, open Usage & Activity. Every credit-affecting action is listed with its cost, what it was for, and your balance afterwards. Your daily brief and its scraping charges are folded into a single row you can expand.