Billing and credits
How CoPhrase plans and credits work — what each plan includes, what a credit buys, and what happens when you run out.
Every plan is a monthly price plus credits. The price buys the platform — channels, the inbox, seats, features. The credits pay for what your agent actually does.
Plans
| Startup | Business | Agency | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $29/mo | $99/mo | $399/mo |
| Credits included / month | 50 | 200 | 1,000 |
| Seats | 1 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Channels | All | All | All |
| Unified inbox & human handoff | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Premium AI models | — | Yes | Yes |
| BYOK (bring your own API key) | — | Yes | Yes |
| White-label — your logo, your domain | — | — | Yes |
| Client workspaces, roles & billing | — | — | Yes |
| Resell at your own price | — | — | Yes |
| Support | Priority, via live chat | Priority, via live chat |
Business includes everything in Startup; Agency includes everything in Business.
- Startup — for a solo founder putting a first agent to work.
- Business — for a team running real volume across channels. Adds premium models for smarter replies, and BYOK.
- Agency — for agencies reselling agents under their own brand. See agencies.
How credits work
One credit = $0.10. The same rates apply on every plan — no metered spikes, no per-plan pricing tables to compare.
There are two kinds of credit on your account, and they behave differently:
| Plan credits | Purchased credits | |
|---|---|---|
| Where they come from | Included with your plan | Topped up from your dashboard, $0.10 each |
| When they arrive | Refresh at the start of each billing cycle | Whenever you buy them |
| Do they roll over? | No — they refresh, they don't accumulate | They never expire |
Plan credits are spent first, so the credits you paid for stay on your account.
What a credit buys
You are billed for what your agent does, and the unit is one reply — not one customer message.
| Action | What it covers | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| Agent reply — Pro | One reply on the premium model. Understanding images and audio the customer sent folds in at no extra charge. | 1 |
| Agent reply — Core | The same reply on the fast, cheaper model. | 0.25 |
| Agent reply — BYOK | Your own API key: the AI costs you nothing here, because you pay your provider directly. | 0 |
| Tool action | Booking a meeting, updating a contact, calling one of your own functions. Charged only when it succeeds — failed calls are free. | 0.25 |
| Web search | Looking something up beyond your knowledge base. | 0.5 |
| Knowledge training | Pages, docs and catalogs your agent reads. | small, per page |
| WhatsApp connection | The dedicated proxy and always-on session each connected WhatsApp number needs. | 100 per month |
What counts as one reply
One reply from your agent — not one message from your customer.
If a customer fires off five rapid-fire messages, they are collected and answered together, as a single reply. You are billed once, not five times.
These are free:
- Messages your agent doesn't reply to (spam, a "thanks!", anything it's told to ignore)
- Replies a human on your team sends by hand
- Anything you try in the playground
Worked example: 50 credits — the Startup allowance — is roughly 50 agent replies on Pro, or 200 on Core.
Knowledge training is charged on change
Re-training only bills for pages that actually changed since the last crawl. Re-syncing a 200-page site where three pages moved does not cost you another 10 credits. See knowledge.
BYOK — bring your own API key
On Business and Agency, you can connect your own AI provider key. When an agent runs on your own key:
- The AI inference is billed by that provider, to you, under your agreement with them.
- It costs no CoPhrase credits.
- You see the real model name in the dashboard, because it's your model.
Conversations handled on platform models keep using credits at the normal rate. BYOK is a per-agent choice, not an account-wide switch.
A dead BYOK key pauses the agent
If your provider key stops working — revoked, out of quota, deleted — the agent on that key pauses and alerts you. It does not quietly fall back to platform inference and start spending your credits. See troubleshooting.
Running out of credits
Hitting zero mid-month does not cut your agent off in the middle of a live customer conversation. You get a loud low-balance and empty-balance alert, and a grace window rather than a hard stop.
To fix it: top up from your dashboard at $0.10 per credit. Purchased credits never expire, so buying a buffer costs you nothing but the money.
Long term, a steady top-up habit is the signal that your volume has outgrown your plan.
Changing plans
- Upgrade or downgrade at any time, prorated.
- Unused purchased credits follow you across plans. They are attached to your account, not to the plan.
- Downgrading to a plan with fewer seats means the extra seats stop working — move people out first.
Agency billing
On the Agency plan, credit usage across all your client workspaces rolls up to your agency account. You pay CoPhrase once. Your clients pay you, at your prices. See agencies.
Common questions
Do I need a credit card to try it? No. Plans start with a free trial, and you can cancel at any time.
Are seats billed separately? No. Startup is a single seat; Business and Agency have unlimited seats at the same monthly price.
Is inbound traffic that the agent never answers billed? No. You are charged when your agent replies. A message it never answers — spam, a filtered thread, a "thanks!" it's told to ignore — costs nothing, and neither does a reply a human sends by hand.
Does testing in the playground cost credits? Test traffic is flagged as test traffic and is not billed like live customer conversations.