Running out of credits.
Compose and BlogCraft check your balance before they start, so nothing half-generates and nothing is lost. Failed work is never charged — the meter only runs on a successful result.
Running out isn't a cliff. Nothing breaks, nothing is deleted, and nothing half-generates — the expensive actions check your balance before they start, tell you what they needed, and hand your work straight back to you.
What stops before it runs
The two things that spend real money check first:
Compose
Your message is checked against your balance before a single word is generated. If you can't cover it, the AI is never called — and your prompt is put straight back in the box, exactly as you typed it. Top up, hit send again, and nothing is lost.
BlogCraft
Generation is gated against the top of the length band you picked — the most the article could possibly cost — so you're never blocked halfway through 4,000 words. Your keyword, title and outline stay exactly where they were.
One useful consequence of that second rule: you're gated on the ceiling, but you're charged on what was actually written. Ask for the 2,500-word band, get 2,310 words back, and you pay that tier's price — not the ceiling you were checked against.
The other paid actions gate the same way, just in their own surfaces. Adding a competitor past your free five tells you it needs 5 credits before it creates anything. The Audit Setup popup shows the estimate for an SEO audit before you start the crawl.
The panel you'll see
A small dialog, and it's specific rather than scolding. It tells you:
- What the action needed, in credits.
- What you actually have.
- The date your monthly credits refresh — sometimes that's tomorrow, and the answer is to wait.
Two buttons take you to Billing, and a link at the bottom opens the full cost list so you can see why the number was what it was.
Failed work is never charged
The meter runs after a successful result, never before it. A generation that errors out, times out, or comes back empty costs you nothing. You are only ever charged for work you actually received.
Your balance also never goes below zero. There's no overdraft, no negative number, and no surprise bill at the end of the month — the ceiling on what ScoutRival can ever cost you is the plan you're on.
What keeps working
At zero credits, the whole intelligence layer is still yours:
- Your Brand Engine — building and rebuilding your market intelligence is never metered.
- Reading, searching, exporting and sharing everything you've already made — briefs, articles, reports.
- Publishing what you've already written to WordPress or LinkedIn.
- Competitor discovery, and every part of your brand setup.
What pauses is new AI generation: fresh briefs, new articles, new Compose messages.
Getting more credits
- Upgrade. Your balance is topped up to the new plan's allowance immediately — you don't wait for the next billing date.
- Add a seat, on Agency. Each extra seat is $25 a month and carries +1,000 credits, refilled every month like the rest.
- Wait for the reset. Your allowance refills on your billing date, and the refill lands the first time you open the app after it. Check the wallet chip on Usage & Activity — it counts down the days.
Or stop spending them
Connect your own AI provider under AI Models and generation runs on your provider's account at their prices, not ours. If you're generating a lot, this is usually the cheaper answer. How it works → · Start with OpenRouter →
Not hitting zero next month
Almost every empty wallet has the same cause: the daily brief, running every day, at a bigger output than the person needs.
- Trim the daily output. Each social post the brief drafts is 2 credits and each blog idea is 2 — every day. Dropping from 5 posts to 3 is 4 credits a day, roughly 120 a month.
- Watch fewer platforms. Scraping is charged per platform checked and per competitor blog fetched. Turn off the platforms your rivals don't really use.
- Open Usage & Activity, sort by highest cost. Thirty seconds there beats any guess about where your month went.
The whole model — the allowance, the reset, the reserve bucket — is in How credits work.