Credits & billing
How Horoptic credits and billing work — reserve, approve, settle, and refunds on failure.
Credits pay for the work that runs in the cloud. There are two different ways they are spent, and it is worth knowing which is which.
Generating media — you approve first
Generating video, images, voice, music or sound effects — and the optional upscale pass when you finish an export — follows reserve → approve → settle:
- Reserve — a proposal estimates its cost as a shape on your timeline. Nothing leaves your balance.
- Approve — you approve at the gate; the credits are held, not spent, while the job runs.
- Settle — on success the hold settles and the result commits. If it fails, the hold is released and you pay nothing.
Nothing in this category ever spends without your explicit approval.
Directing — metered as you go
The AI Director is a large language model, so thinking costs something every turn. Each turn bills the credits its own reasoning used, drawn from your balance as you go rather than proposed for approval first. If your balance is empty, a turn is refused instead of run.
This is the one thing in Horoptic that spends without a per-item approval step, so it is worth stating plainly: a long conversation with the Director has a running cost, even on turns where it doesn’t generate anything.
The standard master render
Rendering your finished timeline to a master on our servers currently costs no credits — you pay only for generation and for the optional upscale finishing pass, if you choose it.
Exact prices land with the public beta.