Usage Quotas

qBraid provides a default monthly quota for AI chats, powered by qBraid credits. This guide explains how your AI quota works and how to track your usage.

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Plan Quotas

Your monthly AI quota depends on your subscription plan: Auto-switch starts off on the Free plan on purpose: a free user should never burn credits on AI by surprise. Turn it on yourself if you want messages to keep working past the quota.

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Usage Costs

AI usage is metered by tokens, not by message. Each model has a price per million input and output tokens, and each message costs the tokens it actually uses. Three things raise the cost of a message:

• Longer prompts and longer answers. More tokens in, more tokens out.
• Bigger models. Frontier models price higher per token than fast models.
• Agent Mode. Tool calls add context to the conversation, so agent runs use more tokens than plain chat.

Token costs convert to credits at 100 credits = $1.

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When the quota runs out

Every message draws from your monthly quota first. What happens next depends on one toggle, Auto-switch to Credits, and your credit balance:

1. Quota remaining. The message is covered by your plan. Credits are untouched.
2. Quota exhausted, auto-switch on, credits available. The message bills your credit balance instead. A message that lands exactly on the boundary splits: the remainder of the quota covers part, credits cover the rest.
3. Quota exhausted, auto-switch off. The request fails with “AI chat quota exhausted. Enable credit spending to continue.” Turn the toggle on or wait for the monthly reset.
4. Quota exhausted, auto-switch on, no credits. The request fails with “AI chat quota exhausted and no credits available.” Buy credits or wait for the reset.

Two details worth knowing:

• A leftover below one cent counts as exhausted. The panel then shows 100% used, and the next message already follows the rules above.
• In a team organization, the admin’s auto-switch setting wins. A member cannot spend org credits that an admin has locked, and the usage panel shows the effective policy, not your own toggle.

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A worked example

A Free-plan user has used 80% of the monthly quota. The usage panel shows 80% used and “can send”. Both are true. 20% remains, so the next message is allowed. Now the user pastes a long paper and asks gpt-5.5 for a detailed summary. At this model’s token rates, the message works out to:

• Input: 200,000 tokens = 20% of the monthly quota
• Output: 15,000 tokens = 9%
• Message cost: 29% of the quota, against the 20% that remains

Here is the part that surprises people. The quota check runs before the message. The cost is only known after the model answers. The remaining 20% is enough to admit the message, so it runs, and the bill comes to 29%. The extra 9% has to land somewhere. With auto-switch on and credits in the wallet, the quota covers its last 20% and the wallet pays the 9% overflow as credits. The message succeeds. The panel moves to 100% used, and later messages run on credits alone. With auto-switch off, or with an empty wallet, the request fails. Free accounts start with auto-switch off, so this is the default experience. The fix is the same either way: turn on Auto-switch to Credits and keep some credits, or wait for the monthly reset. The lesson: one long message can cost more than days of short ones. Cost follows tokens, so a single long paper on a frontier model can outweigh a week of ordinary chat.

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Tracking Your Usage

Monitor your AI usage in real-time from your account dashboard:

1. Navigate to your account dashboard
2. Go to Account > Usage > AI Chat Usage
3. View your current consumption and remaining quota

The usage panel displays:

• Monthly Quota — Progress bar showing percentage of your monthly AI quota used
• Status — Whether you’re currently using your quota or credits
• Renews — The date when your monthly quota resets
• Can Send — Whether you can currently send AI agent messages
• Auto-switch to Credits — Toggle to continue chatting with credits when your quota runs out

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Tips for Efficient Usage

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Upgrading Your Plan

Need more AI usage? Visit your subscription settings to upgrade your plan, or contact us for enterprise plans with custom AI allocations.

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