Credits & plans

Everything Pixploder asks the AI to do is paid for with credits — one currency for generating a scene, filling an extended canvas, naming and cutting objects, rebuilding what was hidden, and repainting a background. Everything you do by hand is free on every plan, including Free: uploading art, importing a PSD, drawing masks, color-keying, shadows, the Final Polish passes, and every export. The AI always runs on Pixploder's own keys and every call is metered, so a credit buys the same thing whatever plan you are on. This page is the whole money story in one place — each pipeline step also carries its own Costs callout for the actions on that screen.

What a credit is

A credit is a unit of AI work, not of time or of output size. The server prices every request before it runs, reserves that many credits from your balance, calls the AI, and settles up afterwards. You always hold two buckets:

• Monthly allowance — the credits a subscription grants at the start of each billing period. They reset at renewal and do not roll over.
• Bought + gifted — credits from a one-time top-up pack (or granted by support). These survive the monthly reset and expire on their own schedule.

When you spend, the server draws the monthly allowance down first and only then dips into bought credits, so a pack outlives the reset. Refunds go back into whichever bucket they came out of.

What spends credits

Every paid control carries its price. Prices below are what the code computes today; the button on screen is always the authority.

What each model costs

Image generation is the expensive bucket, and its exact price depends on which model you pick. Steps 1, 2 and 4 put an AI model picker beside the generate button; Step 5 keeps the same choice as the model row inside the section's ⚙ and inside a past run's Run again drawer. Every option in those lists carries its own price inside its label, followed by a short tag, so you can see what a switch costs before you spend it:

That is the whole shape of the pricing: naming, segmenting and masking are one to a few credits per request; painting new pixels runs to a couple of dozen.

Wherever an image is generated, the price rides in the button itself, so you never have to look it up:

Free, always

• Uploading a PNG, JPG, or layered PSD, and every export format.
• Apply crop (free) in Step 2 — a pure crop or shrink asks the AI for nothing.
• Drawing and editing masks by hand: Tap, Element, Brush, Box, Grow 1px, Shrink 1px, Fill holes, ⇄ Invert, undo/redo, and the whole Refine mask section. Where a price would otherwise be expected the editor writes free on the button itself — on Refine mask, and on every split method except the paid carve. See Edit mask.
• The Flat color and Period clone fill engines in the repair window, and the Period clone · free · instant fill method in Step 4.
• The color keyer — see The keyer — contact shadows, Add Shadows, Final Polish, repixelize and bake, the 3D diorama, and Preview & Export. Steps 6, 7 and 8 call no AI at all.
• Comparing and choosing: switching between takes, versions and variants, picking one, and reusing another sprite's result never re-runs the AI.
• Queuing in Step 5. The ↺ corner on a result or an approved tile (Re-roll <name> — queue another try) only puts the sprite back in the queue; nothing is spent until you press the Generate button, which prices the whole queue.
• Re-arranging a queue: Split into N calls · M cr and Repack into N calls · M cr only re-bin what is queued — the number on them is what running those calls would cost, not what the click costs. Unticking a call in the 👁 panel takes it, and its credits, out of the next run. See Calls & sheets.
• Re-cut G<n> in Step 5 re-cuts sprites out of an image the run already stores. Its confirmation says so in as many words: no model call, no credits.

The confirmation before every spend

Before any spend, a dialog titled Use <n> credits? states the cost and your balance — This AI generation will use N credits. You have M. — with a Don't ask again this session checkbox and Cancel / Use <n> credits buttons. Cancel is focused when the dialog opens, so a stray Space or Enter never spends anything.

• Batch actions ask once for the whole sum, not once per call. A Step 5 run that packs into four calls raises one dialog for all four.
• Two dialogs cannot stack. If a second paid action tries to ask while one is open, you get the toast Answer the credit confirmation on screen first — one at a time. instead of a second dialog.
• Don't ask again this session takes effect the moment you tick it, and stops the per-action confirmation for the rest of your visit. It comes back after a reload.

When you run out

There is no nagging low-balance warning. The guard fires at the moment you trigger an action you cannot afford, as a small Heads up dialog:

• Signed out: Sign in to use AI features.
• Short of credits: This needs <n> credits but you have <m>. Upgrade your plan or buy a credit pack. — this one carries a See plans button that opens Plans & credits; Got it dismisses.

The dialog is a courtesy, not the gate. The server checks and reserves credits independently of the browser and refuses any overspend with Out of AI credits. Upgrade your plan or buy a credit pack., so nothing you click can run the AI for free. Nothing is charged for a refused call, nothing breaks, and every take, sprite and mask you already made stays in the project. Top up or upgrade and press the same button again.

Because Free grants no monthly credits, a brand-new Free account meets this notice on its very first AI action until it buys a pack or starts the trial.

When a run fails

Credits are reserved the instant an AI action starts and settled the moment it finishes. What comes back depends on whether the AI provider was actually reached:

• Nothing reached a provider — you keep everything. Refusals that happen before the work starts — signed out, short of credits, a blocked account, a tool that is switched off — never reserve a credit at all. And when a request is reserved but the AI is never called (a validation failure, or Pixploder's own queue giving up while waiting), the whole reservation is handed straight back. Those failure notices carry the words Your credits were refunded.
• The provider had already run — one credit is kept and the rest is returned. A generation that errors out, is safety-blocked, times out, or hands back no image after the call went out costs a flat floor rather than the full price. The message names the split: You were charged N credits because the AI provider had already run; the other M went back to your balance. A 26-credit sheet that dies in a provider outage costs one credit, not twenty-six.
• A batch that half-lands is partly refunded. Segmenting several concepts at once charges only for the requests that actually ran; the status line spells it out as N requests failed (partially refunded).
• A run killed by a server restart or a database blip is reconciled afterwards. If the refund cannot be handed back on the spot, the message says … could not be returned right now — this is retried automatically and your balance will be corrected within the hour. If even that cannot be arranged, it hands you a request id to quote to support instead.
• Results are not lost when a tab is. A generation that was still running when you closed the browser is picked up on your next sign-in for up to 24 hours: successful ones are delivered, and for failures you get a line saying how many were refunded.

The one case that cannot promise you anything is a lost connection: The connection to the server was lost while the AI was still working. The request may have finished and been charged — check your credits before trying again. Check the header balance before re-running that action.

Plans at a glance

Free is genuinely pay-as-you-go: it grants no monthly credits, so the only way a Free account runs the AI is a credit pack. Pro and Studio each drop their allowance into your account every billing period, and Studio is the better rate per credit. Paused is a retention plan rather than something you sign up for — it appears as an offer when you already have a subscription and are thinking about leaving, and like Free it can still spend packs.

The landing page's Simple pricing cards are a preview — Start free, Start free trial, and Get Studio all just open the sign-up screen. You actually subscribe inside the app, in the Plans & credits modal, where only Pro and Studio appear as subscription cards; Free is simply the no-subscription state.

The modal opens with one honest line about your account — Free accounts keep saved projects up to 14 days after your first save and hold 1 GB of project storage; paid plans keep them for good, with 100 GB. You're on <PLAN>. — and below it every card is labeled for the situation you are in: Get Pro and Get Studio while you have no subscription (the Pro card adds ✨ Starts with a free trial), Current plan on the tier you are already on, Upgrade to Studio with Applies immediately (prorated), Downgrade to Pro with Takes effect at period end, Scheduled ✓ on a change you have already queued, and Applying… on one whose payment has been taken and is still landing.

Prices are in USD before tax; the modal's own footnote opens Prices in USD, before tax — VAT/sales tax is added at checkout where applicable. and then names the external payment provider that takes the money. That provider is the Merchant of Record: checkout is hosted on its pages, and it issues your invoice and processes eligible refunds.

Your credits, in one panel

Under the plan cards, Your credits shows all of it at once: the total as <n> effective in the heading, then up to two boxes.

• Subscription — what is left of this period's allowance, printed as <left> over of <allowance> · resets ≈ <date>. A Free account has no monthly bucket at all, so this box is simply not drawn.
• Bought + gifted — your pack balance, with valid until <date>, or expired struck through, or none yet.

Underneath, the rule that catches people out: Bought and gifted credits share one expiry date covering the whole balance, and it only ever moves forward — a new pack extends it for everything you are holding.

Credit packs (one-time top-ups)

Packs are one-time purchases that stack on top of any monthly allowance, listed under Credit top-ups · no subscription needed in the Plans & credits modal; the price on each card is also its buy button. They are the only way a Free or Paused account runs the AI, and they work on Pro and Studio as a reserve. The section header states the rule — expire 6 months after purchase — and every new top-up pushes that single date six months out for your whole bought balance.

Your balance in the header

Signed in, the top-right account cluster always shows where you stand. On a wide screen it reads as your email with one line under it carrying your plan in capitals and then <n> credits; hover that line and, when part of your balance is bought credits, a tooltip says <n> purchased credits expire <date>. On a phone the email block disappears and the balance collapses to a compact chip showing just the number, with your email, plan, and the same expiry line in its tooltip. The last control in the cluster is the sign-out icon (Sign out); account deletion is not here — it lives inside the billing modal.

Next to it sits the billing button that opens Plans & credits from any screen. It reads Upgrade in the editor and Buy credits / Upgrade on the projects gate while you are on Free, and Plans & Credits on any paid plan. The balance refreshes after every metered AI call.

Coming back from a successful checkout, the app shows Payment received — activating your plan… your credits appear here as soon as it lands (usually a few seconds). and then 🎉 Payment complete — your plan is active. If the plan has not appeared within a minute you get a line telling you to reload and contact support if the credits are still missing — nothing is lost either way.

The 3-day Pro trial

Pro starts with a free trial. Signed-in Free users who have not dismissed it see a one-time modal, Try Pixploder Pro free for 3 days, listing what it unlocks: 100 trial credits to start right away, Full sprite detection + reconstruction, and Cancel before day 3 and pay nothing. Start free trial begins it through secure checkout — a card is required, nothing is charged during the trial — and Continue with Free (pay-as-you-go credits) declines and does not ask again in that browser.

During the trial your plan reads TRIAL in the header and carries 100 credits. The Plans & credits modal shows a green banner with the date, ⏳ Free trial ends <date>. Cancel before then and you won't be charged., and a Cancel trial link beside it. The Pro card is marked Trial → Pro because that is the track you are on, and the Studio card offers Trial → Studio with the caption Converts to Studio at trial end — nothing charged today if you would rather land on the bigger plan. Either way, the switch is free until the trial ends.

Changing plans: upgrade, downgrade, pause, cancel

Every plan change happens in the Plans & credits modal, and for an existing subscriber the cards modify the same subscription rather than starting a second one. Only one change can be pending at a time.

1. Upgrade — the card reads Upgrade to Studio with Applies immediately (prorated), but clicking it does not charge anything yet. It opens a confirmation panel, Confirm your switch to STUDIO, which replaces the plan grid so the figures cannot be scrolled past. The panel shows two numbers before a card is touched: a green +N credits box, captioned Approximately this many, added to this billing period the moment the payment lands — we grant them, and the exact figure is worked out from the days left at that moment., and a ≈ $X.XX box captioned charged today · estimate with Your payment provider calculates the final amount and it may differ slightly with tax or rounding. underneath. If the amount cannot be worked out it reads Amount unavailable and the confirm button is disabled rather than showing $0.00. Three lines below spell out the rest: your credits already used this period stay counted and your renewal date does not move; how many of the period's days are left; and that from your next renewal you get the full monthly allowance at the full price. Confirm & pay goes ahead; Back leaves everything as it was. You are never charged without seeing both figures first. While the payment is being applied the banner says Payment taken — <PLAN> is being applied to your account now. and offers no undo, because the card has already been charged.
2. What an upgrade grants — the difference between the two plans' monthly credits, pro-rated over the time left in your billing period, rounded down. Upgrade with a third of the month to go and you get about a third of the difference: from Pro (400 a month) to Studio (1,500) with eleven of thirty days left, that is 403 credits on top of what you already had, for about $7.33. The days are counted against your real period, not a flat thirty. Only the allowance goes up, and the new credits land the moment the payment does.
3. Downgrade — Downgrade to Pro with Takes effect at period end. This one is a single click with no confirmation panel, because nothing is charged or refunded today. An amber banner then appears at the top of the modal: Scheduled: switch to <PLAN> on <date>. You keep <PLAN> and its credits until then.
4. Pause — the amber box Keep your projects for $1.90/mo and its Pause button park the subscription from your next renewal: every cloud project stays safe and fully editable, monthly AI credits stop, and top-up packs keep working. Once paused, the plan cards read Resume on Pro and Resume on Studio.
5. Cancel — Manage or cancel your subscription → first opens the Before you cancel… screen, which spells out the consequence before you go anywhere. On a running subscription no end date exists yet, so it reads You keep <PLAN> until your current billing period ends. After that your account drops to Free and your cloud-saved projects are deleted about 14 days later, unless you come back. You can export anything before then.; during a trial, or once a cancellation has fixed the dates, it names them instead. It repeats the pause offer as Keep projects — Pause $1.90/mo, and then hands you to the external billing portal with Continue to Manage billing. Keep my <PLAN> — never mind backs out. The portal opens in a new tab; the cancel itself happens there.

Canceling keeps your access until the end of the period you already paid for, then the account drops to Free. Until that date a rose box in the modal, Your subscription is cancelled, offers one-click recovery: Resume <PLAN>, or Keep projects — Pause $1.90/mo, with or manage in the billing portal → underneath. While a subscription is canceled the plan cards are locked — resume first, then change plans.

When billing goes wrong

• A payment that did not go through raises an amber banner across the top of the editor — 💳 Your last payment didn't go through. Your <PLAN> plan keeps working for now, but unless it's fixed your monthly credits stop at the next renewal and your saved projects are removed later. Credits you bought as packs are unaffected. — with an Update payment button that opens the billing portal. Once the plan has actually lapsed the same banner reads 💳 Your last payment didn't go through, so your subscription has ended. Update your payment details to get your plan back — credits you bought as packs are unaffected.
• A paid plan with no subscription we can find shows a rose notice instead of the management buttons: your credits are safe, top-ups still work, and it points you at [email protected] with your account address.
• A change the server will not make is refused with the reason rather than a generic error — Your subscription is cancelled — resume it first in Plans & credits, then change plans., There's an unpaid or refunded charge on your subscription. Open “Manage billing”, sort the payment out, then change plans., or A switch to <PLAN> is already scheduled. Cancel that change first, then pick a new plan. The same ladder guards the confirmation panel, so you learn a change is impossible before you authorize it, never after.

Projects, plans, and the deletion clock

Saving is free on every plan, but how long a saved project lives is a plan question, so it belongs here:

• On Free, the clock starts when you save your first project and runs 14 days. A rose banner counts it down — ⚠️ Your saved projects will be deleted on <date>. Resubscribe to keep them, or export them now. — with a See plans button beside it.
• After a paid plan lapses, you keep everything until the period you paid for ends; the account then drops to Free and the same 14-day window starts. An amber banner warns ahead of time: ⏸ Your <PLAN> ends <date> — then saved projects are deleted around <date>. Keep them: resume, or pause for $1.90/mo., with a Keep my projects button.
• Starting or resuming any paid plan clears the clock, and Paused counts — that is the entire point of the $1.90 tier.
• Exports are yours regardless. A PSD, sprite sheet, or engine package on your own disk is untouched by any of this, and exporting never costs credits.

How much you can store is a plan question too: a Free account holds 1 GB of project files, every paid plan — Pro, Studio, the 3-day trial, and the $1.90 pause — holds 100 GB, and the number of projects is not limited on any of them. The projects screen prints where you stand as a plain figure, in a line such as 1.6 GB of 100 GB used, with a bar under it. Gigabytes here are the decimal kind your invoice uses: 1 GB is 1,000,000,000 bytes.

Deletion is done by a scheduled job on the server, so the date on the banner is the promise, not the exact minute. See Projects & autosave for how saving itself works, and FAQ & troubleshooting for the short version of these rules.

Taxes, receipts, and the legal pages

The Plans & credits footer carries both statements you need before paying: Prices in USD, before tax — VAT/sales tax is added at checkout where applicable. and By purchasing you agree to our Terms and Refund Policy, and acknowledge our Privacy Policy. Those three are live links — they open in the app without discarding your work, and a ctrl/cmd or middle click opens the real page in a new tab. The same three documents also live at /terms, /refunds and /privacy, alongside the Imprint / Legal Notice at /legal, and all four are linked from the landing footer.

Billing, account and privacy questions go to [email protected]; the Imprint / Legal Notice page lists the operator details, the payment arrangement, and the community support channel.

Deleting your account

Account deletion lives in the Plans & credits modal, at the bottom under Danger zone, as Delete account (permanent). It removes your projects, your stored images, and any remaining credits, and it cannot be undone — two confirmations spell that out before anything happens.