How are credits counted?
·4 min read
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GESTEL has one kind of credit. Photos and videos are not counted separately — whatever you make comes out of the same balance. A default photo is 20 credits, a default 5-second clip is 215, and a better model, a larger size or a longer clip costs more. The price is not a number we set: it is proportional to what that model costs us. Photos and clips are counted on their own scales, and a clip is priced per second, so its length multiplies it. The credits a job will spend are printed on the generate button, they are deducted when you press it, and anything that fails is refunded automatically.
One kind of credit
A plan reads as credits per month, not “N photos + M videos”. Pro is 4,000 credits a month: about 200 default photos if you only make photos. A clip is 215 credits, so every clip you mix in takes that many photos off the month.
| Plan | Credits / month | In default photos |
|---|---|---|
| Free | 75 | about 15 |
| Starter | 1,200 | about 60 |
| Pro | 4,000 | about 200 |
| Ultra | 14,000 | about 700 |
A free account gets 75 credits every month and uses the lite image models; video and every other model start on the paid plans.
One currency is the honest shape. Video models run from 215 credits per 5 seconds to several hundred, so a unit called “one video” would shortchange either us or you depending on the model you picked. Pinning a credit to model cost removes that problem.
What spends what
| Action | Credits |
|---|---|
| Generate or edit a default photo (GPT Image 2 · Medium) | 20 |
| A default 5-second clip (Grok Video 1.5, 720p) | 215 |
| Other models, sizes and lengths | per model |
| Remove background · upscale (from the button) | free, daily limit |
| Registering a product · answering a question · picking a shot | free |
Every model's price is in What spends credits, and how many?. Whatever you are doing, the number beside the generate button is what it will spend, before you press it.
When credits leave your balance
Credits are deducted when the job starts, not when the result arrives. That is why the balance drops while a shot is still rendering.
- Failures are refunded. Whether the model errored, the job stalled, or the result never came back. Anything silent for more than 20 minutes gets swept, and at 2 hours it is declared failed and refunded.
- Batches are counted per image. Ask for 4 and get 3, and only the failed one comes back.
- Refunds return to where the credits came from, expiry included, so a failed generation can be retried inside the same period.
Refunds appear in your usage history as a line beginning `Refund:`. That is the place to look first if your balance seems wrong.
When credits expire
Credits expire per batch you received.
- Credits that arrive monthly last one month from the day they arrive.
- Credits granted on a mid-month upgrade last until the end of the period then running.
- When you spend, the credits expiring soonest are used first — the ones that would vanish first are the ones to use first.
- Whatever is unused when its time is up expires, recorded as its own line in your usage history, so nothing disappears silently.
Free accounts work the same way: 75 credits arrive every month, and last month's do not carry. Upgrading grants the new plan's credits there and then.
Where to check
Settings → Subscription shows your balance, each batch with its expiry, and your full usage history. On the canvas, the number beside the generate button is what this action will cost. How to read it is in Where do I see how many credits I've used?.