How credits work

Summary#

A credit is the unit Metric Vault uses to meter premium data reports, the tools that pull paid third-party data such as backlink indexes, keyword databases and competitor traffic estimates. Every paid plan includes a monthly credit allowance. The technical SEO tools cost zero credits on every plan, and on a paid plan the 1-credit tools keep running after your allowance is gone. Only reports priced at 3 credits or more stop when you run out.

Purpose#

Premium research data costs money to fetch, and it costs very different amounts per tool. A redirect-chain check is a single HTTP request we pay nothing for. An influencer analysis fans out across many paid endpoints. A flat "runs per month" allowance would either overcharge people who mostly use the cheap tools or make the expensive ones unsustainable.

Credits solve that by letting the price of a run track the real cost of the data behind it. The result is the thing most people actually want: the tools you open every day are free to run, and your allowance is reserved for the heavyweight research you deliberately choose to spend it on.

Overview#

Four statements cover almost every credit question:

1. The technical SEO tools cost 0 credits, on every plan. Running them never touches your allowance, and there is no cap on how many you run beyond a fair-use ceiling described below.
2. Light tools cost 1 credit and are never blocked by the monthly allowance. On a paid plan they keep working after the allowance is spent.
3. Premium reports cost 3, 5, 6 or 8 credits and are gated. When the allowance is exhausted, these are the ones that stop.
4. The Free plan runs the 0-credit tools only. Anything that costs a credit needs a paid plan.

Your allowance is a monthly budget, not a wallet. It comes with the plan, it resets on the first of each calendar month in UTC, and it does not roll over. There is no way to buy extra credits on their own. See Plans and pricing for each plan's allowance.

How it works#

The cost tiers#

Every tool carries a fixed credit price, set from its measured backend cost per run.

The complete per-tool price list is Credit cost table. Any tool not named there is charged 1 credit.

What is charged, and when#

A run is charged once it produces a result. A run that fails before that point is not added to your usage, and an unrecognized tool request is rejected before anything is charged.

Social publishing is metered differently#

Publishing from Social Dashboard costs 1 credit per channel the post actually reaches, not 1 per press of Publish. A post to three channels costs 3; if one of them fails, it costs 2.

It is also the one cost-1 action that is not covered by the light-tool allowance. Some channels charge Metric Vault per post regardless of the customer's plan, so publishing draws on the monthly credit allowance like a premium report and stops when that allowance runs out. Free cannot publish at all: it returns a plan message, not a quota message.

Two consequences are worth knowing:

• A cached result still costs its normal price. When a report can be served from our shared data cache we skip the call to the data provider, but you are charged the same credits and the run counts against your allowance in the normal way. See Result caching and freshness.
• Reopening a saved result is free. Anything in Saved Work can be opened as many times as you like at no cost. Only a fresh run charges again. Saved results are kept for 90 days.

Before a repeat run, the app offers you the cheaper option. If you have run the same query recently you see a dialog headed "You already ran this", with "Open saved result", "Run fresh (6 credits)" and "Cancel".

The gate: which tools stop when you run out#

The monthly allowance is only consulted for runs costing 3 credits or more.

On Free, anything that costs a credit returns:

This tool needs a paid plan. Free includes the 10 technical SEO tools; upgrade to Pro to unlock the rest.

On a paid plan with the allowance spent, a premium report returns a message naming your plan, the reset date and how many days away it is. The exact wording is in Quotas and rate limits.

Light-tool credits still count toward the total#

This is the single most confusing part of the model, and it is worth understanding before you read your usage figure.

Credits spent on 1-credit tools are added to the same monthly total that the premium gate compares against. Light tools are never blocked by that total, but they do consume it. So a month of heavy light-tool use can leave you with no headroom for premium reports, and your usage can legitimately read higher than your allowance, for example 620 / 500 reports, while the light tools carry on working.

If a customer asks why premium reports stopped when they "have not run any reports", this is almost always the answer. Tracking your usage shows the per-tool breakdown that proves where the credits went.

The monthly reset#

The allowance resets at 00:00 UTC on the first day of each calendar month. It is a calendar reset, not your subscription anniversary, so a subscription that starts on the 20th still gets a full fresh allowance on the 1st. Nothing carries over.

Credits belong to an account, not to a workspace#

Each account carries its own plan, its own monthly allowance and its own usage counter. When someone runs a tool, the credits come out of their allowance, checked against their plan.

Sharing a workspace does not share credits. Joining a workspace lets you see the work stored in it, such as saved results, monitored competitors and reports, but it does not grant you the owner's plan. Someone who has no paid plan of their own can open and read everything in the workspace, and can run the zero-credit technical tools, but any tool that costs a credit is refused.

The practical consequence for a team: budget a plan for every person who needs to run paid tools, not one plan for the workspace. See Team and workspace billing and What teammates share.

A separate allowance for recommendations#

The Get Recommendations button on a result is a paid feature with its own monthly allowance, on top of the credit it costs. A recommendation therefore consumes one recommendation from that allowance and one credit from your monthly allowance. See Get Recommendations and Quotas and rate limits.

The fair-use ceiling on light tools#

Light and free tools are capped at 100 runs per hour per account, as an anti-abuse measure rather than a commercial limit. At the ceiling you see:

Hourly fair-use limit reached (100 light-tool calls/hour). This protects our infrastructure from abuse while keeping your monthly usage unlimited. Please wait ~14 minutes for the next hourly reset.

The counter resets on the hour, in UTC.

Where to see your balance#

The credit indicator in the dashboard header shows used / allowance with your plan beside it, for example 137 / 500 reports PRO. The Account page repeats it on the Usage tile, and the per-tool breakdown is on the same page. Full detail is in Tracking your usage.

Each tool also shows its price next to the run button: a FREE badge for 0-credit tools, or a label such as 6 reports.

Screenshots#

Tips#

• Run the technical tools freely. They will never reduce your allowance.
• Explore with a 1-credit tool, then commit with the 3-credit one. Keyword Explorer to find candidates, Keyword Overview to decide on the survivors.
• Save the reports you will refer back to. Reopening them is free forever, up to the 90-day retention window.
• Batch the expensive research at the start of an engagement, then work from the saved results.

Common mistakes#

• Choosing a plan on credits alone. Most teams hit the seat limit long before the credit limit. See Plans and pricing.
• Re-running instead of reopening. A saved result costs nothing to open. A fresh run costs the tool's full price again.
• Assuming a cache hit is free. It saves time, not credits.
• Expecting rollover. Unused credits expire at the month boundary.

FAQs#

Do credits roll over? No. The allowance resets on the first of each calendar month in UTC and unused credits are lost.

Can I buy extra credits without changing plan? No. There is no top-up. Extra headroom comes from moving up a tier.

Does each team member get their own credits? Yes. Every account has its own plan and its own monthly allowance, and each run is charged to whoever ran it. A teammate who has no paid plan of their own can read the workspace and run the zero-credit tools, but cannot run anything that costs a credit. See Team and workspace billing.

What happens the moment I run out? Reports costing 3 credits or more stop. Everything at 0 or 1 credit carries on. You are not locked out of the app.

Am I charged for a run that failed? No. Usage is recorded only after a run produces a result. If you believe you were charged for a failure, note the time and see Contacting support.

Why does my usage show more than my allowance? Light-tool credits count toward the same total but are never blocked by it. See "Light-tool credits still count toward the total" above.

Can an administrator reset my usage? Yes. Metric Vault support can credit a usage total back for the current month. That adjusts your usage counter, not your invoice. See Refunds.