Credits and BYOK

Credits are the prepaid unit Visibility meters paid work in. One credit is worth **$0.01**, so a$25 top-up is 2,500 credits. Balances are always shown as a plain number, such as “1,250 Credits”, never with a currency symbol. Credits pay for the work that costs money to run: AI Visibility checks, keyword rank checks, live SERP lookups, keyword metrics, and agents running on the managed Visibility AI models. Everything else in the product — creating tasks, chatting with agents, reading reports, refreshing organic traffic — costs nothing. If you already pay for a DataForSEO account or an AI provider, you can connect those accounts and take that work off credits entirely. That is BYOK, “bring your own keys”, and it is set once per Company.

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Your balance

Your balance is one pool made of two parts. Plan credits are always spent first, so a top-up is only drawn on once the month’s allowance is gone. Two places show the balance:

• The Credits card near the bottom of the sidebar, with a Top up button. When the sidebar is collapsed it becomes a coin icon whose tooltip breaks the balance into what is left of the monthly plan credits and what is left of your top-ups.
• Billing → Overview → Credits, which adds the plan and top-up split and two rules of thumb: ”≈ N keyword checks” and ”≈ N AI checks” at the current rates.

Both are visible to members with the Manage billing permission, which Admins have by default. Other members do not see the Billing page and ask an admin to top up. See Billing and subscriptions and Team management.

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What each action costs

These are the current rates. Rates can change, and the app always prices work with the live rate before you spend, so treat the cost notices in the product as the source of truth. Agents running on one of your own connected AI clients are billed by that provider instead and never touch credits — see Your own AI clients below.

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See the cost before you spend

Visibility prices metered work up front, in the screen where you set it up.

• Project → Keyword Ranking → Manage keywords shows a notice above the tabs: “About N Credits/month to track these keywords”, with the arithmetic behind it, for example “60 keywords × 5 × 4 runs/month”. With no schedule set it reads “5 Credits per keyword, per check” and adds “Rank tracking isn’t running yet, so nothing is being charged.”
• Project → AI Visibility → Setup shows the same kind of notice: “About N Credits/month for AI-visibility checks”, broken down as prompts across assistants times runs per month.
• Project → Settings → Schedules shows “~N Credits est. / run” on each job card. Pressing Run now asks you to confirm first, naming the estimated cost: “This runs immediately and will cost ~N Credits”.
• Every Run records the tokens it used and its cost, on the run page and in the task’s Agent runs list.

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Top up

Top-ups go through secure checkout. Credits are added once the payment completes.

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When you run out of credits

Metered work is refused before anything is spent, rather than half-completing. If the balance cannot cover a whole batch of checks, the batch is stopped and the message tells you what it needed and what you have.

• Scheduled rank checks and AI Visibility runs are skipped for that cycle.
• Agents on Visibility AI do not start a new Run, and a run already in flight stops if the balance reaches zero mid-way. Its run page then shows an Out of credits card with your balance, the date your plan credits renew, and a Top up credits button — or “A company admin can top up.” if you cannot buy credits yourself.
• Nothing is lost. Work resumes as soon as credits are added, or on the 1st when the plan pool refills.

Agents running on your own AI clients keep working, because they are not metered in credits.

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Where the credits went

Open Billing → History for the full ledger under Credit history. Filter it with the chips All, Visibility AI usage, SEO & AI-visibility checks and Top-ups & refills; each chip shows its all-time total. Each row names what happened, for example “AI Visibility — ChatGPT”, “Keyword rank check ×40”, a Visibility AI model with its token count, “Top-up · Credits added” or “Monthly credit refill”, with the date, the signed amount and the balance left after it. The list shows 25 rows at a time; page through it with Previous and Next. For agent spend specifically, Agents → AI Clients Cost splits Total spend into credits used on Visibility AI and dollars billed to your own clients, over 7d, 30d, 90d or All. The note under it reads “Visibility AI is metered per token · BYOK clients are measured per session.”

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Your own DataForSEO keys

By default your SEO data runs on Visibility Data — the data account Visibility provides — and DataForSEO usage on it is metered to credits. Connecting your own DataForSEO login moves part of that work onto your account, where it is billed by DataForSEO and not metered here. You need to be a company admin; the setting is per Company, not per project.

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What your own keys do and do not cover

This is the single most common misunderstanding about BYOK: your own DataForSEO key does not make rank tracking free. Rank checks and AI Visibility checks stay on Visibility Data and keep costing credits at the rates above. When you hire an agent from a keyword preset, its draft names which lane it will use — “Keyword data provider: Visibility Data — included, usage metered to credits” or “DataForSEO — your own key” — with a Change link. See Agents.

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Your own AI clients

Agents run on one AI client plus a model, chosen on the agent’s Config tab.

• Visibility AI is the managed lane. There is nothing to connect: pick one of the Visibility AI models in the Model dropdown, and usage is metered in credits per token at the rate shown for that model. The Config tab reminds you: “Metered — usage deducts your company credits.”
• Your own client means the agent runs on an account you connect under Company settings → AI clients: Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI or API Client. That agent’s usage is billed by your provider, not in credits.

Connect a client once and any agent can be pointed at it. Hiring or switching an agent onto a client that is not connected is refused, with a message telling you to connect it in Company settings or pick a Visibility AI model instead. Full detail is in Agents and Company settings.

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Common questions

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