Billing and credits
How Sume credits work, where they come from, and where to buy more.
Sume counts all usage in credits. Generation, the Sume Agent, Formats, and the Developer API all draw on one credit balance for the workspace.
Open Billing & subscription to examine the plan and the credits that are available. In a team workspace, the link opens the team's billing page.
(The product nav label is Billing & subscription. Older docs called this surface “Credits”.)
Pricing shows the subscription plans. The API rate card shows how many credits each capability uses.
Where credits come from
| Credits | Where they come from |
|---|---|
| Plan credits | A paid plan adds its credits at the start of each billing period. They expire at the end of that period and do not roll over. |
| Free credits | The Free plan gives a workspace one grant of credits, one time only. |
| Purchased credits | A team workspace can buy more credits on its billing page at any time. They last longer than plan credits, but they also expire. |
Sume uses plan credits first, then purchased credits. Inside each kind, the
credits that expire soonest go first. GET /v1/balance reports the next expiry
under expiration.
How a request uses credits
A paid request reserves its credits when Sume accepts it. Sume captures them when the request completes. A generation that fails, or that you cancel before it starts, returns its credits to the balance. The usage ledger shows each step. Refer to Usage.
The Generate button in the product shows how many credits a request uses
before you start it. Over MCP, dry_run=true returns the estimate as
usage.credits without submitting anything.
When the balance cannot cover a request, the API returns 402 insufficient_credits with the message "Not enough credits for this request."
details.required_credits is what the request needs, and
details.available_credits is what the workspace has. Upgrade the plan, or buy
credits for the team, and then retry.
Current public reads
These endpoints are read-only. Their scope is the workspace of the authenticated API key. Usage describes the fields. The live OpenAPI gives the accurate schemas.
Buy credits
When billing is configured for the workspace, the team billing page can start a Stripe checkout for more credits. After checkout completes, the usage ledger shows the purchase and the balance shows the new credits.
Only team workspaces can buy credits. A personal workspace gets more credits by upgrading its plan, or by creating or joining a team.
For API clients, buying credits is a dashboard operation. At this time, the public Developer API gives balance and usage reads. It does not give a public endpoint to buy credits.