Billing

Credits

Amounts are in credits. Credits are written as JSON numbers with up to 6 decimals; the smallest unit is a micro-credit, so amounts are exact.

The account balance is prepaid. Each call is priced from the price list, and failed calls cost 0.

Field	Meaning
cost	What this call charged, in credits.
balance	The account balance after this call.

Price list

Model	Unit	Billed item and when it is charged	Price (credits)
sam3	encode_image	Image encoding, per image: once per call; waived while the encoding of the same image is still cached for the account	0.5
sam3	prompt	Text prompt: one decode per text phrase in POST /v1/segment; exemplar boxes, positive or negative, add no charge, and a call with boxes and no text phrase is one prompt	0.05
sam3	point	Point prompt: one decode per point in POST /v1/segment	0.02
sam3	refine	Refinement: one decode per POST /v1/refine call, whatever the number of points and whether a box is given	0.02
sam-lite	encode_image	Image encoding, per image: as for sam3	0.2
sam-lite	point	Point prompt: one decode per point in POST /v1/segment	0.01
sam-lite	box	Box prompt: one decode per box in POST /v1/segment	0.01
sam-lite	refine	Refinement: one decode per POST /v1/refine call, as for sam3	0.01
ppocr-v6	image	Text recognition: one image per request	0.25
paddleocr-vl	page	Document parsing: one page image per request	2
dinov3	image	Image embedding: one image per request	0.05
siglip2	image	Image embedding: one image per request	0.05
siglip2	text	Text embedding: each string in texts[]	0.01
birefnet	image	Background removal: one image per request	1

Notes on the units:

• ppocr-v6: one image per call, whatever the number of lines or words and whether options.words is on.
• paddleocr-vl: one page per call, whatever the number of blocks.
• siglip2: a text search over N stored images costs N image units once, then one text per query.
• birefnet: the cutout and the matte cost the same; there is no cache discount, every call runs the full model.

GET /v1/models returns the current prices in prices[] with the same units. Prices are versioned; every call is priced with the version in force when it ran.

Reserve and settle

A call reserves its full price before it runs and settles on what the worker reports. Failed calls release the reservation and are not charged. A balance that cannot cover the reservation answers 402 insufficient_balance.

SAM image encoding fee and cache hits

sam3 and sam-lite charge an image encoding fee (encode_image) per call. When the encoding of the same image was already computed for the account and is still cached on the GPU node, the fee is waived. The response then says "cache": "hit" with "imageFee": 0, and the encode_image line has waived: true and amount: 0.

{
  "cache": "hit",
  "imageFee": 0,
  "billing": {
    "lines": [
      { "unit": "encode_image", "quantity": 1, "unitPrice": 0.5, "amount": 0, "waived": true },
      { "unit": "refine", "quantity": 1, "unitPrice": 0.02, "amount": 0.02, "waived": false }
    ],
    "total": 0.02,
    "charged": true,
    "pool": null
  }
}

A cache hit is a bonus, not a promise. Cached encodings are deleted after at most 7 days and are evicted earlier when capacity is needed, so there is no minimum retention. Pricing for planning purposes must assume the encoding fee on every call. Caches are per account and are never shared across accounts.

Refining an image that was just segmented is often a cache hit, but the fee is only waived when the response says so.

How SAM calls are billed

SAM calls are billed by the number of decodes. A decode is one pass of the model for one prompt or one object, run on the image encoding. The image encoding itself (encode_image) is billed once per call and is waived on a cache hit. How the stages work is described under How it works on the model pages.

Endpoint	One decode is	Unit
POST /v1/segment	Each prompt	sam3: prompt for each text prompt (exemplar boxes, positive or negative, add no charge; a box-only call is one prompt), point for each point. sam-lite: point for each point, box for each box.
POST /v1/refine	The whole call, whatever the number of points and whether a box is given	refine

Worked examples at list prices:

• sam3, POST /v1/segment, 3 text prompts on a new image: 0.5 (encode_image) + 3 × 0.05 (prompt) = 0.65 credits.
• sam3, POST /v1/segment, 2 text prompts and 3 exemplar boxes on a new image: 0.5 + 2 × 0.05 = 0.60 credits, because the boxes add no charge.
• sam3, POST /v1/segment, 4 exemplar boxes and no text prompt on a new image: 0.5 + 0.05 = 0.55 credits, one prompt for the single visual query.
• sam3, POST /v1/segment, 1 text prompt and 2 points on a new image: 0.5 + 0.05 + 2 × 0.02 = 0.59 credits.
• sam-lite, POST /v1/segment, 4 boxes on a new image: 0.2 + 4 × 0.01 = 0.24 credits.
• sam3, POST /v1/refine, 10 clicks on a cached image, each click sent as its own call with all earlier clicks: 10 × 0.02 = 0.20 credits, because the encoding is waived. The first call on a new image costs 0.5 + 0.02. With sam-lite the same editing session costs 0.2 + 0.01 for the first call and 0.01 for each later one.
• A single POST /v1/refine call with 12 points and a box is still one refine: 0.02 with sam3, plus the encoding when it is not cached.

Pools can cover a call without charging the balance; the billing lines still show these list prices. The unit prices above are the current ones, and every call is priced with the version in force when it ran.

The billing object

Every successful inference response carries billing, which explains how the call was priced.

Field	Meaning
lines[]	One line per priced unit: unit, quantity, unitPrice, amount and waived.
total	The sum of the lines. When the balance could not cover the whole price, total is what was actually debited.
charged	Whether the balance was debited. false for calls covered by an included daily allowance and for Playground trial calls.
pool	The pool whose daily allowance covered the call (public or free). null for billed calls.
allowance	used and limit of today’s (UTC) included calls, counting this one. Present only when pool is set.
capped	Present and true only when the price exceeded the balance and the debit was cut down to it.

cost always agrees with billing: it equals total when charged is true, and 0 otherwise. On a call that is not charged, the lines still show the list price.

Example of a billed sam3 call with two text prompts and a cache miss:

{
  "cost": 0.6,
  "balance": 998.4,
  "cache": "miss",
  "imageFee": 0.5,
  "billing": {
    "lines": [
      { "unit": "encode_image", "quantity": 1, "unitPrice": 0.5, "amount": 0.5, "waived": false },
      { "unit": "prompt", "quantity": 2, "unitPrice": 0.05, "amount": 0.1, "waived": false }
    ],
    "total": 0.6,
    "charged": true,
    "pool": null
  }
}

Adding credit

• The minimum top-up is US$0.99 (990 credits).
• Top-ups are credited at US$1 = 1,000 credits.
• Credits do not expire.
• The first top-up also unlocks the free and paid pools. See Rate limits and pools.

Online top-up is not available yet. The Billing page of the console explains how to add funds.