> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.alakazam.gg/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Forge billing

> You pay for what you take: 1 credit per kept episode, billed once, at delivery.

<div className="forge-kicker">◆ FORGE · billing</div>

The forge's billing rule fits in a sentence: **everything is free until you
take the dataset out, then it's 1 credit per kept episode, exactly once.**

## What's free

Uploading and health checks. Sampling. Planning. **Runs and renders**, including playground splices and described changes. **Reviews**, confirm and
overrule cost nothing, so you can grade honestly instead of strategically.

## What bills

**Delivery.** When you export (or publish) a campaign, every kept episode
entering that delivery that has never been billed on the campaign debits **1
credit**, atomically, before anything is exported:

* An episode bills **at most once, ever**, re-delivering after new keeps
  charges only the additions; re-affirming, toggling verdicts, or re-exporting
  never double-bills.
* Insufficient balance returns `402` and **changes nothing**, top up and retry
  the same call. `detail` starts with `insufficient_credits:need=N` and appends
  pointers to where you buy more:
  `insufficient_credits:need=N:checkout=/api/billing/credits/checkout:packs=/api/billing/credits/packs`.
* Failures fail closed: if the wallet can't be reached, delivery refuses rather
  than exporting unledgered data.

The exported archive and its download only ever contain billed episodes.

## Credits

Credits are the same wallet as the rest of Alakazam (your balance is the ◍
chip in the forge topbar). Top-ups are one-time Stripe purchases from the
chip; packs start at single credits so you can pay for exactly the episodes
you keep. The wallet API is shared:

```bash theme={null}
curl -s https://forge.alakazam.gg/api/billing/credits \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN"
# → {"credits": 12}
```

<Info>
  Keeping a **described change** in the playground follows the same principle
  on the scenario side: generation is free to try; a kept clip debits its
  credits when you accept it.
</Info>

## Your account page

Balance, the full credit ledger (every grant and spend with its reason), your
campaigns with measured usage, and daily generation charts live at
[forge.alakazam.gg/?view=account](https://forge.alakazam.gg/?view=account), also reachable from the avatar menu on any forge surface. Programmatic access:
`GET /api/billing/credits` (balance), `GET /api/billing/credits/history`
(ledger, newest first), `GET /api/workbench/account/usage` (daily counts and
category totals), all with your bearer token.