# Credits

> Plaintext version for LLMs. Canonical HTML: https://askbowtie.com/docs/credits/

Credits are the only thing askbowtie charges for. No subscription, no seat fees, no surprise bills: you buy a balance, and it goes down only when Bowtie does AI work for you or your traffic runs past the free tier. Everything else, including every MCP query your agent makes, is free. For what's free and the exact allowance, see [Plans & limits](/docs/pricing/).

## What a credit is

| Purchase | Credits | Per credit |
| --- | --- | --- |
| $10 | 1,000 | $0.01 |

Credits are a single balance on your account, spent across every site you own. There's no per-site credit pool to track and no separate currency to convert.

## What consumes credits

| Action | Cost | Notes |
| --- | --- | --- |
| AI answer (in-app Ask tab) | A few credits per question | Rolling out. Cost scales with how much the question makes Bowtie dig through. |
| Overflow event (past the free ~100,000/month) | Fraction of a credit per event | Only events beyond the free allowance draw down credits. See [what counts as an event](/docs/pricing/#what-counts). |
| MCP tool call from your own agent | Free | Never metered, never charged, regardless of balance. |

Nothing else spends credits: the tracker, the dashboard, uptime checks, and Search Console/Google Ads syncs are never billed against your balance.

## Balance and expiry

- **Credits never expire.** A balance from six months ago spends the same as one bought today.
- **Early users get a free stack** to start with, no card required.
- **No subscription.** You're never auto-billed on a recurring schedule; you buy a balance and it draws down as you use it.

## MCP self-queries are free

Querying your own data through the MCP server, from your own coding agent or any other MCP client, never spends a credit. The only AI spend that touches your balance is the in-app Ask tab, where Bowtie itself answers a question inside the dashboard. Those are two different things: your agent asking the MCP for raw data is free; Bowtie doing the thinking for you in-app costs a few credits per answer.

## Topping up

Top up from Settings in the app, any time your balance runs low. There's no auto-recharge unless you turn it on, and no minimum purchase beyond the $10 = 1,000 baseline.

See [Plans & limits](/docs/pricing/) for the free tier and [Pricing](/pricing/) for the overview.