Credits | EchoNova Docs

Base URL https://api.echonova.ai

Every metered call costs credits. This page tells you what each service costs, how AI model usage turns into credits, and what happens when a workspace balance or a key's credit limit runs out.

What a credit is

Fact	Value
How you get credits	From your plan every month, from the trial, and from top-ups. Open Subscription in the portal to see the balance and where it comes from.
One balance	Every service draws on the same balance: plan credits first, then extra credits from top-ups, dated batches first.
Fixed prices	EchoNova's own services cost the same number of credits on every plan.
AI model usage	Priced at the provider's model price plus 10%, then turned into credits at the rate of the credits that pay for it.
Granularity	Fixed services are charged per character or per second. Every charge is rounded to a whole credit (half up, at least 1). The API and the portal show whole credits.
Where to see a charge	The `creditsConsumed` field on every job, in the synchronous response and on the job endpoints.

Rates

Service	Unit	Credits
Text to Speech	One character of the `text` field, spaces and line breaks included	1 per character
Speech to Text	One second of audio from an uploaded or recorded file	100 per minute
Live Speech to Text	One second of real-time streaming transcription	200 per minute
Sound cleaning	One second of audio, minimum 1 second	1,000 per minute
Voice agents	One second of a connected call, silence included	2,500 per minute, plus AI model usage
EchoReader pages	One page read from a document	50 per page
Instant voice clone	One voice	$2.00 fee, plus 500 for the build
Professional voice clone	One voice	$5.00 fee, plus 1,800 per training hour
Clone liveness check	One second of the code recording	2 per second
Clone same-speaker check	One second compared	1 per second

Per-minute and per-hour prices are charged per second, with a minimum of 1 second, and each charge is rounded to a whole credit (at least 1). A job is priced at the rates in force when it runs, and creditsConsumed on the job is always the amount charged.

A voice clone also pays for its transcription (Speech to Text rate), its cleaning (Sound cleaning rate) and its preview line (Text to Speech rate). Its dollar fee is taken in credits at the rate of the credits that pay, like AI usage below, without the 10%. A professional voice is charged at a 1 hour training estimate, fee included; when training ends, only the difference in training time is charged or refunded.

How AI usage becomes credits

Agent conversations, knowledge indexing, website crawling, building an agent with AI and database tool setup use AI models. They are priced in two steps:

The provider's price for the tokens, plus 10%.
That amount in dollars, turned into credits at the rate of the credits that pay for it.

Credits that pay	Credits per $1
Starter, monthly	31,578.95 (600,000 ÷ $19)
Growth, monthly	37,974.68 (3,000,000 ÷ $79)
Scale, monthly	40,160.64 (10,000,000 ÷ $249)
Starter, yearly	37,894.74 (600,000 ÷ $15.83, a twelfth of $190)
Growth, yearly	45,569.62 (3,000,000 ÷ $65.83)
Scale, yearly	48,192.77 (10,000,000 ÷ $207.50)
Trial	The Starter monthly rate
Extra credits	28,571.43 (100,000 ÷ $3.50)

When one charge is paid partly from plan credits and partly from extra credits, the dollars are split: the plan credits cover what they can at the plan rate, and the rest is converted at the extra-credit rate. On a trial, AI usage stops once its provider cost reaches $1.

Worked examples

Call	Credits charged
88 characters of Text to Speech, spaces included	88
3,000 characters of Text to Speech	3,000
10 seconds of Speech to Text	17 (16.67, rounded)
15 minutes of Speech to Text	1,500
30 seconds of Sound cleaning	500
12.4 seconds of Sound cleaning through the API	207 (206.67, rounded)
A voice call connected for 2 minutes 15 seconds	5,625, plus the AI usage of its turns
AI usage with a $5.00 provider price, on Starter monthly	$5.50 × 31,578.95, about 173,684
The same, on Growth monthly	about 208,861
The same, on Scale monthly	about 220,884
The same on Starter, with 100,000 plan credits left and extra credits	100,000 plan credits cover $3.17; the other $2.33 costs about 66,667 extra credits

When credits are charged

Step	Text to Speech	Speech to Text	Sound Cleaning
Price is computed	From the `text` field, before the job starts.	From the audio duration in the file's metadata, or from its size when the file carries no duration, before the job starts.	From the decoded length of the audio, not its header, with a minimum of 1 second, before cleaning starts.
Workspace balance is charged	Before generation starts.	Before transcription starts.	Before cleaning starts.
Job fails	The charge is refunded to the workspace and does not count toward the key's usage.	Same.	Same.

If the workspace balance cannot cover the charge, the call is rejected before any work runs:

{
  "data": null,
  "statusCode": 402,
  "success": false,
  "errorMessage": "Insufficient subscription balance"
}

Credit limit per key

A key can carry an optional Credit Limit, set when you create or Edit the key in the portal. It caps how many credits that one key may spend per billing cycle. It does not change the price of a call and it does not add credits to the workspace.

Fact	Behaviour
Counting	Usage counts from the start of your billing cycle and resets to zero on the key's first reserved call of a new cycle, from Text to Speech, Speech to Text or Sound Cleaning.
Every metered call	A call that would take usage past the limit is rejected with `429` and the body below. Nothing is charged. This covers Text to Speech, Speech to Text and Sound Cleaning.
No limit	Leave Credit Limit empty. The key is then bounded only by the workspace balance.

The rejection body for a call over the limit:

{
  "data": null,
  "statusCode": 429,
  "success": false,
  "errorMessage": "Monthly spending limit exhausted"
}

This 429 carries no Retry-After header and waiting does not clear it. Raise the limit, clear it, or wait for the next billing cycle. The other 429 on this API is the request rate limit; see Rate limits.

Spending webhooks

A key with a credit limit emits two webhook events as its usage is recorded.

Event	Fires when	How often
`spending.warning`	Usage reaches 80% of the limit or more.	Once per billing cycle.
`spending.exhausted`	Usage reaches the limit or more.	Every time a call is recorded at or past the limit.

A key without a credit limit emits neither event. See Configure a webhook to register an endpoint and Webhook events for the payloads.

Set the limit where it protects you

A credit limit bounds one key, not the workspace. Set it on every key that runs unattended, a little above that system's normal monthly use, and let the two spending events tell you when it is approached.

Recommended

One key per system, each with its own Credit Limit and a webhook on spending.warning and spending.exhausted.

Less effective

One shared key with no limit, watched by reading Subscription at the end of the month.

FAQ

Why is a charge rounded to a whole credit?

AI usage is priced in dollars first and then turned into credits, so it rarely lands on a whole number. Per second prices rarely do either. Each charge is rounded to a whole credit, half up, and is never less than 1. The portal and the API show the whole number.

Why does the same AI call cost a different number of credits on another plan?

A plan's credits are worth a different number of dollars: Scale's credit is cheaper than Starter's. The dollar price of the call is the same; the credits it takes follow the rate in the table above.

Is a failed job charged?

No. The charge is made before the work starts and refunded when the job fails. creditsConsumed on a failed job still shows the amount that was charged and refunded.

Does whitespace in my text cost credits?

Yes. Every character of the text field counts, spaces and line breaks included.

Can waiting clear the spending-limit 429?

Only the next billing cycle clears it. To keep working now, raise or clear Credit Limit on the key under Edit.

Does the credit limit add credits?

No. It caps how much of the workspace balance one key may spend. The balance itself comes from your plan and purchased credits.