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The Two Ways To Buy

Credits reach your account two ways, and you can use either or both. A subscription is the cheaper way to buy volume — a third less at the entry sizes, and further below that as the volume grows. Pay as you go is the way to buy credits without committing to a month: a backfill, a seasonal spike, a month that ran long, or simply a first purchase small enough not to think about.
Both are bought from fetchin.io/billing, where the same configurator prices either one — pick the volume, switch the tab, and compare the two totals before you pay. Public prices are at fetchin.io/pricing.

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Rates

Rates are progressive, in units of 1,000 credits. Buying more lowers the price of the credits above each threshold; it does not reprice the ones below it.

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What that costs

Because the rates are marginal, 5,000,000 credits cost **7,300∗∗,not5,000×7,300**, not 5,000 × 1.45 = 7,250:thefirstmillionisstillbilledat7,250: the first million is still billed at 1.50 and only the four million above it get the lower rate. The configurator shows the exact total and the effective per-1,000 rate before you confirm, so you never have to reproduce the arithmetic.

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Sizes

  • Minimum: 20,000 credits ($30)
  • Maximum: 50,000,000 credits in a single purchase
  • Steps: 20,000, then 50,000 up to 1,000,000, then 250,000
Need more than 50,000,000 at once, or an invoice instead of a card? Contact sales.

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How They Are Spent

A request always draws from your subscription first, and only reaches your pay-as-you-go credits once the plan allowance for the period is exhausted. Among those, the ones expiring soonest are drawn down first.
1

Plan credits

Your monthly allowance. It is replaced at each renewal, so anything unspent is lost — which is exactly why it is spent first.
2

Pay-as-you-go credits, soonest expiry first

Then your soonest-expiring purchase, until it is empty, then the next one.
3

402

Only when every balance is empty does a request fail with 402 QUOTA_EXHAUSTED.
This order is fixed. There is no setting to reverse it, and there is no way to reserve credits for a particular key, endpoint or environment.

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Expiry

Each purchase expires 12 months after its own purchase date. Buying again never extends an earlier purchase — two bought six months apart have two different expiry dates and are consumed in that order. paygExpiresAt on GET /api/v1/subscription gives the date of the soonest-expiring credits you still hold (null if you hold none), which is the date to watch: it is when your balance can drop without you having called anything.
Pay-as-you-go credits are non-refundable, and expired credits are not refunded or restored. Buy what you will realistically consume within the year rather than reaching for the largest rate break you can afford.

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What They Do Not Change

  • Your rate limit. Requests per second is a property of your plan. Buying credits never raises it, and no purchase size unlocks more throughput — see Rate Limits. If you are hitting 429, credits are not the fix.
  • Your plan. creditsLimit keeps reporting the plan allowance, and creditsUsed keeps counting the plan alone, so both stay meaningful after a purchase.
  • Your subscription’s fate. If you later cancel your plan, its credits stop renewing and your rate limit falls back to the default 5 requests per second. Your pay-as-you-go credits stay, and you can keep spending them until they expire.

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Buying

1

Open Billing

Go to fetchin.io/billing and switch the configurator to the Pay as you go tab.
2

Pick a volume

Choose a preset or set your own. The total and the effective per-1,000 rate update as you go, and the subscription tab prices the same volume for comparison.
3

Pay

Checkout is handled by Stripe. Credits are added to your account as soon as the payment clears — normally within seconds.
4

Verify

fetchin.io/credits shows the new balance and each purchase’s expiry date, and GET /api/v1/subscription returns it as paygCreditsRemaining / paygExpiresAt. In-flight calls start succeeding again with no redeploy.
A past-due subscription does not block a purchase. These credits are prepaid, so you can buy them to keep working while a card issue is being sorted out.

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Checking Your Balance in Code

creditsRemaining is the sum of both balances — the number to gate on. Watch paygCreditsRemaining if you want to know when your one-time credits are running low, and paygExpiresAt to be reminded before a batch lapses.
Gate your traffic on creditsRemaining > 0 alone. active is about billing standing, and an account with no subscription but a live pay-as-you-go balance reads status: "free" while being perfectly able to call the API — requiring active there would stop traffic that would have succeeded.

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Common Questions

Yes. Sign up, buy, call the API — 20,000 credits for $30 is the smallest way in. Your rate limit is the default 5 requests per second until you take a plan.
Yes. You can hold several at once. They are consumed soonest-expiry first, and each keeps its own 12-month clock.
A subscription, at every volume — about a third less at the entry sizes and around 40% less at a million credits and above. Pay as you go buys you the absence of a commitment, not a better rate.
No. Every endpoint bills the same credits whichever balance pays — see Quotas for the per-endpoint table.
No, including the unused portion, and expired credits are not restored.
No. Credits and throughput are separate axes. Higher sustained RPS comes from a plan — contact sales.