Credits and spending
Credits are what a workspace spends to make things — here is what they cost, when they're charged, and who gets to spend them.
A credit is the unit Endless charges for work that costs money to run: generating an image or a video, transcribing a recording, a chat turn, a web or social lookup. Credits belong to the workspace, not to you — one shared pool that everyone in it draws from.
Reading a chat, browsing assets, organizing projects and changing settings are free. Only work that runs a model costs anything.
Where your balance lives
The quickest look is the Credits item at the bottom of the sidebar, and it's there for everyone. Open it and you get your available balance, the cap that applies to you if there is one, how long until the next refill, and the workspace's last 14 days of usage as a chart.
Settings → Billing is the fuller picture: the plan itself, what it includes, and a "Next credits refill" line giving the exact amount and date. That page needs the billing permission — admins and Billing managers hold it by default. Without it the entry isn't in the settings menu, and going to the address directly lands you on Settings → Account instead. A workspace with no subscription is on the Free plan, which tops itself up with a fixed allowance of free credits every week.
Those weekly free credits don't stack up: each refill replaces the last rather than adding to it, so what you don't use in a week is gone. Not every credit behaves that way, though. Credits you buy carry over — and so does the one-off welcome grant a new workspace starts with. Both sit in a pool the refill cycle never resets.
You see the cost before you spend it
The Image and Video composers show the credit cost of the run you've set up, before you send it. It's a close estimate, and usually exactly right — the estimate and the charge go through the same pricing, from the same inputs. What separates them is what they count: the estimate prices the outputs you asked for, the charge prices the ones that actually came back, so a run that returns fewer than you asked for costs less than it quoted. Long jobs that finish in the background are priced again from their real inputs when they land.
Costs vary enormously between models. A single video can cost many times what an image costs — enough, on the Free plan, to exceed a whole week's credits in one run. Read the estimate before you send, especially the first time you try a model. Which models cost what is in the app: see Models.
Some models don't have a fixed price at all, because what they charge depends on what you feed them. Those show as "Varies", explained in the product as "This model is priced by the size or length of its inputs, so it has no fixed per-output rate. The exact cost is calculated from the real inputs at each run." You still see the real number in the composer once your inputs are in place.
When you're charged
Before it starts
Endless checks your available credits against what the run will cost. If there isn't enough, it refuses before anything runs — nothing is generated and nothing is charged.
When it completes
The charge lands when the work does, for the outputs you actually got. A run that fails doesn't cost you credits.
Long jobs settle when they finish
A video can take a minute or two, and it's charged when the finished clip arrives — not when you pressed send. You can close the tab; the result and the charge both land anyway.
Who can spend what: three levels, first match wins
The credits a workspace holds and the credits you can spend are not the same number. Endless resolves your available balance in a strict order and stops at the first rule that applies to you.
Your personal limit
If someone set a spending limit on your membership, that is your ceiling. The field that sets it reads "Maximum credits this member can use per billing cycle. Leave empty for unlimited." The workspace can be flush with credits and you can still be out. It's set in Settings → Members, per person, by someone who can manage members; the default is "Unlimited".
Your team's limit
No personal limit? Then your active team's limit applies, if it has one. In the product's words: "Members inherit team limit if they don't have a personal one." Teams and their caps live in Settings → Governance → Teams, a page that needs the permission to change workspace settings — so unless you're an admin you'll meet a team cap without being able to open the page that sets it.
The workspace pool
No personal limit and no team limit means you draw straight from the workspace balance, like everyone else.
First match wins, and only the first. A personal limit doesn't add to a team limit — it replaces it. Give someone a personal limit and their team's cap stops applying to them entirely.
What you see when you hit a wall
Out of credits
"You're out of credits" — the workspace pool is empty. On the Free plan it tells you when the next refill lands; otherwise an admin can top up or change plan.
Your own limit
"You've reached your personal spending limit. Your workspace still has credits." Nothing is wrong with the workspace — ask an admin to raise your limit.
Your team's limit
"This team reached its spending limit. Your workspace still has credits." Same situation, one level up.
Seeing where the credits went
Two views are open to everyone: the sidebar Credits popover, for your own balance and the workspace's last fortnight, and Settings → Members, where every row carries what that person has used this cycle against their limit.
The deeper views are admin territory. Settings → Governance → Activity shows the whole workspace's history in one feed — generations, admin changes and credit movements — with the total credits spent across the period you filter to, and Settings → Governance → Teams breaks spending down per team. The Governance section as a whole needs permissions that, by default, only an admin holds; a Member, Viewer or Billing manager doesn't see it in the settings menu at all.