Credits and plans

Credits pay for the work ChannelForge does for you: researching, building, rendering, checking and posting. One credit is $0.10 of list value. The Trial gives 400 credits once, paid plans add a monthly allowance, and credit packs add more whenever you need them. These are the rules the billing code keeps — written down so you can hold us to them.

How a job is charged#

Every job is charged from what it really cost us — the model calls it made, its narration, any priced Google service it used (such as transcription) and its GPU time — at your plan's rate, rounded up to whole credits. A job that cost anything costs at least 1 credit; a short, simple episode costs less than a long, scene-heavy one. Bigger plans convert at a lower rate, so the same job uses fewer credits on them.

A few kinds of work are priced differently:

The public niche finder and the originality checker are free and need no account.

The price before every job#

Every button that starts paid work shows its price beside it, before you press it. Under a form it reads like this:

Typically N credits — Most episodes on this channel cost L–H credits; R is reserved and the rest returned.

Beside a small button it is the short form, ~N credits · R reserved. Where the numbers come from:

1. what jobs of the same kind (and class: a premium episode is priced apart from a standard one) were charged on this channel over the last 60 days, once there are at least five of them;
2. else in this workspace;
3. else across ChannelForge;
4. else — no history yet — the reservation itself: "R is reserved when it starts — there is no history of jobs like it to go on yet."

N is the middle of those charges and L–H the middle half of them. When jobs like it usually cost more than R, the sentence says that the difference is charged when the job ends. A setup started from the start page shows the same for each of its steps: typically to the first episode, typically in all, and the most it reserves at once. The API answers the same question; see Developer overview.

Reserved, then settled#

 you press the button ──▶ the job reserves R credits (it does not start without them)
                            │
 the job ends ────────────▶ charged what it really used; the rest of R comes back at once

• A job that needs more than you have does not start: "Not enough credits: this needs about R, and A are available."
• A job is charged what it used, which can be a little more than it reserved. If your balance cannot cover the difference, it shows below zero and your next credits repay it first.
• A job retried after a failure on our side pays for its last attempt only.
• Credits are always drawn from the grant that expires soonest, so plan credits usually go before pack credits.

When nothing is charged#

The credit history lists each of these lines, so a refund is never invisible. The same rules are in the Refund Policy.

Typical costs#

A standard episode — written, narrated, rendered and checked by the critic — typically costs 193 credits on Creator, 177 on Pro and 162 on Agency. A premium episode, made by the Opus-class agent, typically costs 239 on Pro. These are medians of real jobs over the 14 days to 2026-11-01; a longer or harder episode uses more.

The What things cost table on Pricing gives the typical credits of every priced job on every plan, worked out the same way: a standard and a premium episode, a channel kit, a brand suite, a film of 6, 8 and 10 minutes, a translation, a revision, a storyboard, a product's reading and its cutaway model, a mascot, a clip from your footage, an hour of transcription, a coach week, a comment themes week and an X post. A row marked estimated has no finished job to measure yet.

Plans#

Paying yearly costs 2 months less than twelve monthly payments. Each plan also sets how many projects, channels and seats a workspace has, how many GPU jobs run at once, how high its jobs stand in the GPU queue, how many may wait, and its storage; the Compare plans table on Pricing lists every one.

What each plan opens#

The outlier radar's accounts grow with the plan. A feature your plan does not include shows a lock — "The outlier radar is on Creator and above" — and its buttons refuse in the same words, before anything is spent. Some features also wait on a platform's own approval; their pages say what works today.

The Trial#

• 400 credits, once you confirm your email. No card.
• Given once per person, to the first workspace you own. Not given to disposable email addresses, and one network gets at most three trials in 30 days. If a workspace says No trial credits for this workspace, write to support@storeswiki.com.
• The credits last 30 days. They do not roll over.
• They cover a channel from a proven format — its identity, its first episode and, at typical costs, its brand suite; the setup's two more episodes then wait for credits. A channel with a renderer built just for it needs more than the Trial holds.
• The Trial publishes to YouTube and converts usage at the highest rate of any plan.

Credit packs#

One-time credits on top of any plan: 500 credits for $55, 1,500 credits for $150, 5,000 credits for $450, 15,000 credits for $1,200. Pack credits last 12 months from purchase. Owners buy them in Settings → Billing, under Buy credits.

Rollover#

Whatever is left of a period's plan credits when it ends rolls over once, for one more month, up to one month's allowance of your plan, while a paid subscription is active — including while a renewal payment is being retried. Rolled-over credits are spent first and never roll over again. Trial, pack, promotion and referral credits, and credits added by our team, do not roll over; each expires on its own date. Settings → Billing shows Rolled-over credits with the last day each can be used.

Spending caps#

A cap is the most a workspace, or one channel, may spend or reserve in a calendar month (UTC).

1. For the workspace: Settings → Billing → Monthly spending cap. Owners set it.
2. For a channel: its page, under Schedule & generation → Monthly spending cap. Owners and admins set it.
3. Type the Cap, in credits a month — or leave it empty for no cap — and press Save the cap.

What a cap does:

• It counts this month's charges plus what is reserved right now, and the meter shows where you stand.
• Paid work that would pass it does not start. The refusal says so: "This would pass the workspace's monthly cap of C credits (S spent or reserved this November, and this needs about R). Raise it in Settings → Billing."
• A channel's schedule and a setup wait instead of failing — the setup's card says Waiting for the spending cap — and carry on by themselves next month, or as soon as the cap is raised.
• Owners and admins are told at 80 % and at 100 %, in the app and by email, once a month for each cap.
• Work already running finishes. A job's final charge can pass its reservation, so a month can end a little above a cap.

An agency's cap covers its clients' work too; see Agency mode.

Where to see every credit#

• The credits meter at the bottom of the sidebar: what is available now.
• Settings → Billing: the plan, the credits, the rolled-over credits, the caps and the last ten lines of the history under Recent credit activity.
• Settings → Credit history: every credit in and out, in plain words — "Generated ‘…’ — N credits (R reserved, X returned)", "Held by the quality check — not charged", "Failed on the platform's side — not charged", "Plan credits for November", "Rolled over (until 31 Dec)", "Plan credits expired". Above them: Charged in the month, Returned to you and Jobs not charged. Filter by channel and by kind of work, and Download CSV. Every role can read it.
• Settings → Usage: what your work used — model calls, GPU time and every grant of credits.
• Activity: each job's credits, reserved while it runs and charged once it ends. The weekly coach brief and comment themes run in the background and are not listed there; their lines are in the credit history.

Buying, changing and cancelling#

Checkout for paid plans and packs is not open yet, and Settings → Billing says Billing is paused. The Trial works now, and so do plans arranged with our team — contact us. When checkout opens:

• an upgrade starts at once, with the new plan's extra credits for the rest of the month;
• a downgrade, or a switch from yearly to monthly, takes effect at the end of the period;
• Cancel plan → Cancel the plan ends it in two clicks: you keep the plan and its credits until the period ends, nothing more is charged, and Keep my plan undoes it before then.

Invoices, payment methods and cancelling are covered in Billing, invoices and caps.

Troubleshooting#

Related#

• Pricing — every plan, every limit and the What things cost table
• Billing, invoices and caps — subscribing, invoices, cancelling
• The quality gates and the critic — when an episode is held, and not charged
• Refund Policy