# Pricing & billing

$5 per million decisions, or $0.000005 each. You buy prepaid credit and every decision is deducted from it. There is no subscription. New accounts get $1 of credit (200K decisions) when they verify their email, so you can test on your own data before paying.

## What counts as a decision

A decision is one answered question:

- [`POST /v1/decide`](https://layahost.com/docs/decide) is always one decision, including every template.
- [`POST /v1/systemone`](https://layahost.com/docs/systemone) is one decision per question. A request with 3 questions is 3 decisions, $0.000015.
- Runs in the [Playground](https://layahost.com/playground) are billed the same way.

The price is the same for every model and does not depend on the length of the text. Answers served from the cache are billed like any other.

**Not billed:** requests rejected with `401`, `402`, `404`, `405`, `422`, `429`, `503` or `529`, and `GET /v1/models` and `GET /v1/templates`.

| Workload | Decisions | Cost |
| --- | --- | --- |
| One moderation check | 1 | $0.000005 |
| One `/v1/systemone` request with 3 questions | 3 | $0.000015 |
| 100,000 support tickets, 3 questions each | 300,000 | $1.50 |
| 1,000,000 comments, one moderation check each | 1,000,000 | $5.00 |

## Add credit

Top up on the [Billing](https://layahost.com/billing) page. You pay with Stripe and get an invoice by email; you can add a VAT ID at checkout. Credit is added as soon as Stripe confirms the payment, and it doesn't expire while your account is active.

Choose a preset or any whole amount from $10 to $5,000. Larger top-ups include bonus credit:

| You pay | Bonus | Credit | Decisions |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| $10 | – | $10 | 2,000,000 |
| $25 | – | $25 | 5,000,000 |
| $100 | +10% | $110 | 22,000,000 |
| $500 | +20% | $600 | 120,000,000 |

The bonus applies to custom amounts too: +10% from $100, +20% from $500. The smallest top-up, $10, buys 2,000,000 decisions.

## Track your spend

- Every response states its cost: `usage.cost_micros` and `usage.cost_usd` on `/v1/decide`, and `meta.decisions`, `meta.cost_micros` and `meta.cost_usd` on `/v1/systemone`. `cost_micros` is an integer in millionths of a dollar (5 per decision), so use it for exact accounting; `cost_usd` is the same amount as a floating-point number.
- The [Billing](https://layahost.com/billing) page shows your balance, your spend over the last 30 days and how long your balance lasts at that rate.
- [Logs](https://layahost.com/logs) list the cost of each request.

## Low balance and an empty balance

We email you once when your balance drops below a threshold, $1.00 by default. Change it, or set it to 0 to turn the email off, in Settings → Data & alerts. The alert re-arms when a top-up takes you back above the threshold.

When your balance can't cover a request, the API answers `402` with `error_type` `insufficient_credits` and doesn't process the request. A request is charged as a whole, so a `/v1/systemone` request with 10 questions needs credit for 10 decisions. Requests work again as soon as you top up; your keys don't change.