Guide · updated November 4, 2026
AI credits and usage limits: what runs out, and what expires
“Unlimited” rarely means unlimited. AI tools ration expensive compute with credits, minutes, message caps or vague fair-use clauses, and unused credits often vanish at the end of the month.
We graded each tool on how clearly it states its limits and how kind they are to a paying user: published numbers, rollover, and no surprise throttling.
A0 toolsB3 toolsC13 toolsD3 toolsE1 tool
| Tool | Grade | What the documents say |
|---|---|---|
| ElevenLabs $5/month billed yearly (Starter; $6 month to month) | B | Better than most: on an active paid plan, unused credits roll over for up to two months, with the balance capped at 3x your monthly quota (top-up credits are outside that cap). The catch is exit: downgrading or cancelling forfeits unused credits at the end of the cycle, and the Terms say prepaid credits generally expire 12 months after purchase with no advance warning. Source |
| Gamma €8/seat/month billed annually (Plus; the pricing page lists euros, no USD list published) | B | Paid plans refresh credits monthly, and unused credits roll over up to double the plan size (Plus can hold 3,000). Annual plans drip credits monthly rather than up front. Credits you buy separately remain for one year after you cancel. The free plan's 400 starting credits never refresh; you can hold up to 2,000 and earn 200 per referral. When a paid plan ends you drop to Free and plan credits reset to 400. Source |
| HeadshotPro $29 one-time | B | Each pack has a fixed headshot count (30, 50 or 70) plus a set number of photo credits (6, 26 or 46), and the pricing page says every package includes one free redo within 60 days of the shoot. Team credits never expire. Whether individual packs ever expire is not stated clearly in the text we read. Source |
| ChatGPT $8/month (Go, US price) | C | No plan publishes a fixed message count. Plus 'may include usage limits such as message caps' that vary with demand, and 'unlimited' Pro access is subject to abuse guardrails. Speed modes eat your allowance faster: Fast mode counts at 2.5 times the standard rate and Ultrafast at 8 times. Credits bought on personal plans are valid for 12 months and then expire without rolling over. The API credits bundled with Pro expire at the end of each billing cycle, according to the pricing page footnote. Source |
| Claude $17/month (Pro, billed yearly at $200) | C | Paid plans have a 5-hour session limit and a weekly limit, and Max and Ultra add a separate weekly limit for Fable. None comes with a number of messages. Anthropic also reserves the right to add weekly or monthly caps or to limit specific models and features at its discretion. Usage credits let you keep going at API rates, and in most countries they do not expire (in Japan they expire after six months). The monthly API credits included with Max, Ultra and Team expire at the end of each billing cycle and cannot be refunded. Source |
| Cursor $8/month (Plus; $80 billed yearly) | C | Every paid plan includes one weekly pool for Cursor's own models, and 'Unused included usage does not roll over'. Pool sizes are given only as multiples of Plus (4x, 15x, 50x), not as absolute numbers. When the pool runs out you wait for the reset, upgrade or draw on prepaid credit, which stays available until used or for 365 days after purchase. A monthly additional-usage cap limits how much paid extra usage you can consume. Source |
| Descript $16/person/month billed yearly (Hobbyist; $24 month to month) | C | Media minutes (uploads and recordings) and AI credits (Underlord, Studio Sound, Green Screen and similar) reset at each renewal, and the help centre says unused amounts do not roll over. Top-ups, sold only on Creator and Business from $25 for 5 media hours or $35 for 350 AI credits, last 12 months and are spent after the plan allowance. Free plan AI credits are a one-time 100. Source |
| Google Gemini $4.99/month (Google AI Plus, US price) | C | Gemini moved to compute-based limits that refresh every 5 hours until you hit a weekly cap. How much you get depends on prompt complexity, the features you use and how long the chat runs. Paid tiers are defined only as multiples: 2x and 4x the standard limit for AI Plus and AI Pro, and 5x or 20x AI Pro for Ultra. Media generation, Deep Research and the Pro model use the allowance faster. The Google One terms say AI credits can expire after a period set when you acquire them and may be forfeited if you cancel. Source |
| GPTZero $12.99/month billed $155.88 yearly (Premium) | C | Every plan is a monthly word quota: 10,000 words free, 300,000 on Premium and 500,000 on Professional, which can run on overage to a 2,000,000-word ceiling. Each scan is also capped by characters: 10,000 on Free, 50,000 on Premium and 150,000 on Professional. Nothing we read says whether unused words roll over, so assume they do not. Source |
| Grammarly $12/month billed yearly ($144/year) | C | Free includes 100 AI prompts a month, Pro 2,000 per member per month, and Enterprise is listed as unlimited. The terms say generative AI use may be limited and that you may be asked to buy extra capacity, which is not refunded when it expires or your subscription ends. Whether unused prompts roll over is not stated. Source |
| HeyGen $24/month billed yearly (Creator; $29 month to month) | C | On monthly billing, unused credits carry over one extra cycle; on annual billing they accumulate until the renewal date, and the oldest credits are spent first. Moving to Free forfeits them. Creator and Pro users cannot buy one-off credit packs and must upgrade; only Business can buy extras at $0.05 a credit. The help centre does not publish per-feature credit rates and says costs are shown in the product before you generate. Source |
| InVideo AI $4/seat/month billed yearly (Basic; $9 month to month) | C | Credits reset every month on the subscription day, including on annual plans, and unused credits do not roll over. Downgrading or cancelling sends you to Free and unused paid credits expire. Extra credits expire after a set period or when the plan ends, but the period is not stated. On the plus side, timeline edits and exports cost no credits. Source |
| Jasper $59/month per seat, billed yearly | C | The pricing page says chat and Canvas content creation do not use credits. Usage-based features do: the rate card lists 10 credits per GEO Hub query run, 40 per Research or Translation Agent run and 10 per Grid row, plus per-call API rates. Neither page publishes a credit allowance per plan or a dollar price per credit, and the terms let Jasper set usage limits under a fair use policy. Source |
| Midjourney $8/month (Basic, billed yearly at $96) | C | Unused Fast time from your subscription does not carry over. It disappears at the end of each month, on monthly and yearly plans alike. Purchased Fast hours expire after 60 days, cannot be refunded and work only while your subscription is active. Relax mode gives unlimited images on Standard, Pro and Mega, and unlimited SD video on Pro and Mega, but Basic has no Relax mode at all. Source |
| Otter.ai $8.33/user/month (Pro, billed annually) | C | Limits are per user, per month, and marked '(no rollover)'. Basic gets 300 minutes, 30 minutes per conversation and 3 imports for life. Pro gets 1,200 minutes, 90 minutes per conversation and 10 imports a month. Business removes the meeting-minute cap but stops a conversation at 4 hours and imports at 6,000 minutes. AI Chat is capped at 20, 50 and 200 queries a month. When a paid plan lapses, members see only their 25 most recent conversations. Source |
| Synthesia $14/month billed yearly (Starter; $19 month to month) | C | The pricing FAQ says monthly allowances and credits reset each billing period, with no rollover; annual plans get the year's credits up front. Credits bought separately stay valid 12 months. Credits burn at different rates: a one-minute Syren video typically uses 1,000 to 2,000 credits and lip-sync doubles the cost, so a 1,250-credit Starter month may cover only about a minute of that model. Source |
| Aragon AI $35 one-time (headshots); app plans from $15/month | D | The terms say unused credits or allowances expire at the end of each subscription period and do not carry over. Separately purchased credits can only be used within the timeframe set at purchase, and promotional credits may expire as stated when issued. Team accounts can only get partial refunds for credits that were never used. Source |
| Perplexity $17/month (Pro, billed yearly) | D | Consumer limits are described as 'weekly limits (average use)' rather than numbers. Computer runs on credits, priced at 100 credits to $1. The welcome bonus credits expire in about 30 days, and Max's monthly credits do not roll over. Purchased credits can be used only while you have an active paid plan and expire after a year without Computer use. Pro's included weekly Computer usage resets weekly and does not roll over. Max accounts have a default monthly credit spending cap of $200. Source |
| Undetectable AI $5/month (10K words, billed $60 yearly) | D | Paid plans are sold as a monthly word allowance. The pricing page reserves 'non-expiring credits' and 'permanent words with no monthly expiration' for Business, which implies personal allowances reset monthly. The terms add that 'If you cancel, you will immediately lose your remaining words', even mid-period. The humanizer page caps a single submission at 10,000 characters, and the free trial at 250 words. Source |
| Magica $12.50/month billed yearly ($14.99 month to month) | E | Unused credits roll over only while the subscription stays active. When it ends, the help center says your entire balance is removed and becomes zero, including accumulated rollover and purchased add-on packs, and cannot be recovered; resubscribing starts from zero. Only Lifetime Access accounts keep credits. Task costs vary by model and tool, and the credits article gives no per-task amounts. Source |
Before you pay
- Check whether credits roll over: monthly credits that expire make an annual plan less of a bargain.
- Top-up credits bought separately often follow different expiry rules from plan credits.
- A cap on the cheapest plan can make the next tier the real entry price for daily use.
Each finding comes from the vendor's own page, read on the date shown in the full review. Terms change: re-read them before you buy. How we grade.