Credits & AI features

Credits are the prepaid unit that powers every paid cloud service in TubePress — the catalogue, the AI features and the marketplace all draw from one balance. They are entirely opt-in: nothing is ever charged unless you choose to import a video, run an AI job or buy a marketplace item.

This page covers how the balance works, how to top up, exactly which AI operations exist and what they cost, and how requests flow safely through the tubepress.io AI proxy.

How credits work

Credits are prepaid. Once you connect an account, your balance is fetched from tubepress.io and shown in the admin — in the catalogue's balance panel and wherever a paid action is about to happen. New accounts start with 150 free credits.

The balance is cached briefly (around a minute) so the admin stays responsive, and it refreshes after every purchase. Because one balance covers catalogue downloads, AI add-ons and marketplace purchases alike, it is worth a glance before a large import.

Topping up

You buy credits on the tubepress.io dashboard through a secure checkout, reachable from the catalogue's balance panel:

• Credit packs — pick a pack and pay through the hosted checkout. Your new balance appears in the admin as soon as the payment clears.
• Auto-recharge — optionally store billing details so your balance tops up automatically when it runs low, so long-running imports never stall.

If your balance runs out mid-job, the action stops with a clear "insufficient credits" message rather than failing silently — top up and resume.

AI features

The AI features rewrite and translate the text around your videos. They are available as add-ons during a catalogue import and from the video editor. The verified operations are:

• Generate / rewrite titles — produce a fresh, clean title from the original.
• Translate titles — into up to eight target languages in a single call.
• Rewrite descriptions — regenerate the description text.
• Translate descriptions — into the same set of target languages.

Separately, you can bulk-translate category and tag names for your multilingual site. Those lookups are cache-first against a shared tubepress.io dictionary, so a name another site has already translated comes back as a free cache hit instead of a paid call.

The AI proxy

AI requests do not go to a third-party model directly. They are routed through the tubepress.io AI proxy (the /v1/ai/* endpoints), signed server-side with your API secret so your keys never reach the browser. The proxy picks a suitable model automatically and returns the result to your CMS.

Each successful operation is debited from your balance; a job that fails is refunded, so you only pay for usable output. Transient errors are retried before anything is charged.

What it costs

The AI add-ons applied during a catalogue import have fixed, per-video prices:

Options stack — enabling title rewrite and description translation, for example, adds both amounts per video. A single translate call covers all of your chosen languages (up to eight) at the one price. The catalogue video itself also costs credits, shown separately before you confirm; see the catalogue. For any other AI action, the cost is shown or debited per use, so you always know the price before it is spent.

Monitoring usage

Keep an eye on spend in two places:

• In the admin — the live balance sits in the catalogue panel and updates after each batch, showing the new total once an import completes.
• On the dashboard — your full transaction history (debits, refunds and top-ups) lives in your tubepress.io account.

If a request is ever refused for lack of credits, the admin says so plainly; top up and re-run the job.

Next steps