A credit is what one capture costs — a single surface, in a single region, with every field in the Envelope included. There are no add-ons and no per-field charges: the answer text, markdown, blocks, evidence sources, fan-out queries, mentions, shopping, ads, and provenance all come with the capture.

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What a capture costs

Each surface has a flat credit cost per capture.
SurfaceCredits
Claude6
ChatGPT5
Copilot5
Google AI Overview5
Gemini4
Google AI Mode4
Perplexity3
Every field is included in the price. A capture that returns rich evidence costs exactly the same as one that returns a short answer.

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You only pay for successful captures

Credits are charged on a successful capture only.
  • An empty capture is free. When a surface returns nothing, the child job still completes with provenance.surfacePresent: false and an empty answer — and it costs nothing.
  • A failed capture is free. If a child ends in failed (for example, a SURFACE_TIMEOUT), you are not charged for it.
Billing is per child job. Nothing is deducted up front when you submit a search — credits are counted as each child capture succeeds.

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Fan-out math

One search fans out to one child per surface × region. The total spend for a search is: 
credits = sum over surfaces of (surface cost) × (number of regions)
For a request across N surfaces and M regions, you spend up to N × M captures — minus any that come back empty or failed, which cost nothing.
A search for ["chatgpt"] in [{ "country": "US" }] is a single capture — 5 credits on success.
A search for ["chatgpt", "claude", "perplexity"] in one region is three captures: 5 + 6 + 3 = 14 credits on success.
A search for ["chatgpt", "gemini"] across [{ "country": "US" }, { "country": "GB" }] fans out to four children: (5 + 4) × 2 = 18 credits if all four succeed. Any child that returns empty or fails is not charged.

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Free credits to start

New accounts start with 500 free credits — no card required. That’s enough to try every surface across several regions before you pick a plan. See aisearchapi.dev/pricing for plans and rates.

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Read your ledger

GET /v1/usage returns your plan, a per-surface job breakdown, and your current balance. 
curl https://api.aisearchapi.dev/v1/usage \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $AISEARCH_API_KEY"

{
  "plan": "growth",
  "usage": {
    "totalJobs": 1432,
    "bySurface": {
      "chatgpt": 540,
      "claude": 388,
      "perplexity": 262,
      "gemini": 21,
      "copilot": 10,
      "google_ai_overview": 142,
      "google_ai_mode": 69
    }
  },
  "balance": { "plan": "growth", "credits": 512340, "unlimited": false }
}
Accounting is per child job. One search across N surfaces × M regions counts as N × M jobs in usage.

Pricing & plans

Compare plans and per-credit rates.

The Envelope

Everything a capture returns — all included in the credit cost.