---
title: "Usage and Credits"
description: "What usage credits pay for, how to see where every credit went, and how the spending limit keeps your bill predictable."
canonical_url: "https://docs.basicmemory.com/cloud/usage-and-credits"
---
# Usage and Credits

> What usage credits pay for, how to see where every credit went, and how the spending limit keeps your bill predictable.

Cloud, Pro, and Business plans include a monthly allowance of **usage credits**. Credits pay for the work Basic Memory does for you: your AI tools and the web app reading, writing, and searching your notes, the background work that keeps them indexed, and [Basic Memory agents](https://docs.basicmemory.com/agents/about). One credit is **$0.01**.

<table>
<thead>
  <tr>
    <th>
      Plan
    </th>
    
    <th>
      Price per month
    </th>
    
    <th>
      Included credits
    </th>
    
    <th>
      Default spending limit
    </th>
  </tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
  <tr>
    <td>
      <strong>
        Cloud
      </strong>
    </td>
    
    <td>
      $19
    </td>
    
    <td>
      1,900
    </td>
    
    <td>
      $38 (2× the price)
    </td>
  </tr>
  
  <tr>
    <td>
      <strong>
        Pro
      </strong>
    </td>
    
    <td>
      $99
    </td>
    
    <td>
      9,900
    </td>
    
    <td>
      $297 (3× the price)
    </td>
  </tr>
  
  <tr>
    <td>
      <strong>
        Business
      </strong>
    </td>
    
    <td>
      $249
    </td>
    
    <td>
      24,900
    </td>
    
    <td>
      $498 (2× the price)
    </td>
  </tr>
</tbody>
</table>

Past the included credits, extra credits cost $0.01 each, up to your spending limit. See [Plans and Billing](https://docs.basicmemory.com/teams/seats-and-billing) for what else each plan includes.

## See where credits went

**Settings → Usage** opens with this billing period: credits used, on a bar up to your spending limit, and a projection for the period. Below it, the report covers any date range: a preset (Today, Yesterday, Last 14 or 30 days, This or Last month) or days picked on a calendar.

<theme-image alt="Settings, Usage: credits by day and by person, app, API key, and agent, with the spending limit" dark="/screenshots/cloud-app/usage-by-agent-dark.png" light="/screenshots/cloud-app/usage-by-agent-light.png">



</theme-image>

The report splits each day's credits between:

- **People, apps, and API keys** that used the workspace, so you can see what each person's AI tools and each key cost.
- **Agents**, each as one line with all of its runs. A run that finishes uses credits for the model's work and the time it ran, under 10 credits for most runs and about 20 for a big job; failed and skipped runs use none. Web searches and page reads cost nothing of their own.
- **Background work**: the jobs Basic Memory ran for the workspace, broken down by type, such as indexing notes, search embeddings, linking relations, wiki pages, imports and uploads, and snapshot downloads.

Storing notes and files uses credits too: a tiny amount for notes, and more if you upload gigabytes of files such as PDFs.

Usage shows up the day after it happens. Scheduled backups and automatic snapshots are part of how we protect your data, so they never count toward your usage.

## The spending limit

The spending limit caps what a billing period can cost: the plan price plus any extra credits. Change it in **Settings → Billing**; the lowest it can go is the plan price.

- At **80% of the limit**, you get a notice.
- At **the limit**, a paid workspace keeps working for one day of grace. After that, the workspace pauses until you raise the limit or the next billing period starts: the app's notes, hosted MCP, and WebDAV stop answering, [shared notes](https://docs.basicmemory.com/cloud/shared-notes) stop opening, and background work waits. Settings and billing stay open, so you can raise the limit right away. Grace-day usage is still billed.
- **Agents stop at the limit too**: you can't start a run, and runs that were waiting are skipped with **Spending limit**. Raise the limit, then run them again.

Nothing is deleted while a workspace is paused. Raising the limit picks up where it stopped.

<note>

Trials stop at their included credits, with no extra credits and no grace day.

</note>

## Read usage from your AI

Owners and billing managers can ask their AI for the same numbers. `bm_project(command="usage")` reports the workspace the session is connected to, for the current billing period or a `since`/`until` range, grouped by `actor`, `day`, or `job_type`. API keys and MCP sessions can read usage the same way; changing the spending limit stays in the web app.

Anyone else gets a message to ask an owner or billing manager.


## Sitemap

See the full [sitemap](https://docs.basicmemory.com/sitemap.md) for all pages.