Credits & billing

What a credit is

One credit is 35 characters of raw message content, rounded up per message, minimum one. A short Discord message is one credit. A 200-character one is six.

Count each message separately, then add the results. This total is the summary’s content credits, before applying the quality multiplier and minimum. Message count alone does not determine the charge.

What a summary costs

The whole formula is one line:

For example, Deep multiplies the content-credit total by 4 and charges at least 800 credits. Its minimum is based on 200 content credits, not a message count.

Why there is a minimum at all

An AI model’s output is roughly the same size no matter how little it read. Summarizing 5 messages costs nearly as much to produce as summarizing 200. Without a floor, tiny summaries would be by far the most expensive thing per credit — and the cheapest way to drain a plan.

Once the content-credit total exceeds the selected quality’s minimum, the charge is that total times its multiplier, rounded up. A few long messages can exceed the minimum just as many short messages can.

Worked examples

Set the total content credits a summary reads. The calculator applies the bot’s quality multiplier and minimum to that input. It cannot price a summary from message count alone. Whether an allowance lasts a month is a different question — that’s A month at this rate, below.

For example, 100 messages of 350 characters each contain 1,000 content credits before the quality multiplier. These worked examples use known content-credit totals:

For scale: Pro’s 175,000 monthly credits is about 437 of the first example, assuming the allowance is used only for those summaries.

A month at this rate

One summary’s price is easy. The question behind it is whether an allowance lasts the month, and that depends on habit rather than arithmetic — how often, how big, how good. Set yours and watch the balance fall.

And if you would rather not guess at the inputs at all, /recommend measures your server and does this arithmetic with your real numbers — free, and it reads no message content. See Which plan you need.

Everything that spends credits

Every feature that calls a model spends the server’s credits, and every one reports what it spent. There is no feature that quietly meters itself somewhere you can’t see.

• /catchup, and every recast button under it — a recast is a new request.
• /ask, and the Ask button on a summary.
• The @mention agent. It decides how many tools to use, so instead of a per-reply estimate it works to a limit for the whole conversation — 3,000 credits by default. The running total is shown while it works, and it asks once before going past that. Most replies land well under it; expect roughly 60–190 credits for a straightforward one.
• Every scheduled run, every live update, and every welcome DM.

Things that cost nothing: /settings, /usage, /admin setup, /privacy, /preset list, /debug, and a live channel that has gone quiet.

Big requests ask first

Any request estimated above 3,000 credits asks you first. You see the number and choose. Nobody should ever discover the price of a large request by being billed for it.

Underneath, the order is always the same:

1. Estimate

Built from the exact text that will be sent. No provider call happens without one.

2. Reserve

The pessimistic figure is held against the balance, so two people running big summaries at once can’t both be told there’s room.

3. Run

The actual work.

4. Settle

Charged against measured usage, and the difference returned. You pay for what happened, not what was predicted.

If a request fails upstream, the reservation is released. A failed summary does not cost you credits.

Warnings arrive at 70%, 90%, and 100% of the monthly allowance, so running out is never a surprise. Automatic runs use a standing cap instead of a prompt — see Schedules, live & welcomes.

An @mention conversation confirms once for the whole session rather than per step, because several individually cheap steps can add up to more than one expensive one. Declining is not a dead end: it answers with what it already found and says what it did not get to.

What each plan includes

Every server starts with 2,000 credits, once — not per month. Paid plans are guild subscriptions: they cover the whole server, not one person.

Welcome allowances count daily slots admitted for generation, not confirmed DM deliveries, and reset at midnight UTC. Welcomes also spend shared credits; see welcome costs and setup.

The trial gives you 200 messages per request on Cheap and Fast, which is enough to judge whether the summaries are any good. It does not include schedules, live channels, or presets, because those are the things that recur.

Subscriptions are bought and managed inside Discord — see below. The full side-by-side is on the pricing page.

How billing and renewal work

Summary Bot is a Discord Premium App. Discord — not us — handles payment, tax, receipts, renewals, cancellation, and refunds. That is Discord policy for paid apps, and it means your card details never touch anything of ours.

Renewal

Subscriptions renew on the billing period Discord shows you, until cancelled.

Your credits reset

When the period advances, the monthly allowance refills. Unused monthly credits do not roll over — but purchased top-up credits are untouched.

Cancelling

Cancel in Discord at any time. It takes effect at the end of the current period, so you keep what you paid for. Discord asks you to cancel from the same device type you subscribed on.

Removing the bot

Removing the bot from your server does not cancel the subscription. Cancel it in Discord separately.

Refunds

Handled by Discord under their refund policy. One-time purchases — that is, top-ups — are generally non-refundable except where the law requires otherwise. Subscription refund requests within five days of a purchase or renewal may be considered case by case. Discord’s current policy is what actually applies.

Changing plan

Feature access follows the entitlement Discord reports. When it changes, the bot picks it up automatically — there is nothing to redeem or activate.

Top-ups add fuel, never features

Top-ups are one-time credit packs for a month that ran long.

• They never expire.
• They are spent after the monthly allowance, so you always use the credits you already paid for that month first.
• Every pack is deliberately worse value than a subscription at the same price. If you find yourself buying them regularly, upgrading is cheaper and we would rather say so.

Safeguards you might meet

A few limits exist that aren’t about your plan. They are worth knowing so they aren’t alarming if you meet one.

Per-member daily capSB-CREDIT-429

On a paid plan, one member can spend at most a fifth of the monthly allowance in a day, so a single person — or a compromised account — can’t empty a shared balance. On the free trial it is 500 credits — around five Fast catch-ups, enough to judge the bot in an evening without one person spending the server’s whole grant before anyone else has seen a summary. It resets daily and affects only that member.

Per-member billing-period capSB-CREDIT-430

One member can use at most the whole included allowance in a billing period by default. Servers with no subscription use a UTC calendar month and 15,000 credits — 30 full days at the free daily figure.

Credits you bought or were given are not capped this way

Both member limits count only the free trial’s share of a request. A top-up you paid for, or credits from a giveaway, are spent as fast as you like — a balance you own already limits itself, and metering it at the free tier’s rate would mean a gift expiring before you could use it.

One at a timeSB-BUSY-409

You can have one summary running at a time. They queue badly, so the bot asks you to wait a few seconds instead.

Global daily stopSB-QUOTA-431

The bot has its own daily provider ceiling across every server. If it’s hit, credit- funded requests pause until midnight UTC. Your balance is untouched, and a personal API key still works.

Admins can inspect or change both member limits with /admin limits; use 0 to restore either default. Run /admin overview for the whole server configuration. Automatic summaries do not consume these member windows because each already has an admin-approved standing cap.

Every safeguard is announced with a code and a fix when you hit it. All of them are listed in Troubleshooting.

Using your own API key

You can save your own OpenAI or Anthropic key with /setapikey. It is used only after the server’s credits are gone — an overage valve, not a way in.

• Plan credits are always spent first. A saved key changes nothing until they run out.
• Usage on your key is billed by that provider, to you, at their rates. Summary Bot takes no cut and cannot see your provider bill.
• for_server:true shares the key with everyone in the server and needs Manage Server. Without it, the key is yours alone.
• Keys are stored encrypted. Remove one at any time with /removeapikey.
• A key never unlocks anything. Quality tiers, server-wide scope, presets, schedules, and live channels are all plan entitlements. A key with unlimited funds still cannot run Deep on Starter.

If something here doesn’t match what you were charged, say so in the community server with the trace id from the message. Billing questions get a real answer.