Billing

Our billing system consists of two parts: credits and subscriptions.

Credits

Credits are the universal currency of pipe0. Requests in production mode are billed in credits. Every new organization starts with 20 free credits.

Whether an errored operation bills depends on its billing mode: onSuccess operations, which cover most enrichment pipes, never bill on errors or empty results.

Credits let you make requests to third-party services without purchasing subscriptions to these services.

You can find the credit costs per operation in the pipe catalog and search catalog.

Pipes "run" when at least one of their output fields will be generated. In case all output fields are provided by your input data, the pipe does not "run" unless at least one provided output value requires regeneration. See input sanitation for more info.

Pipes can "run" without consuming credits. This is determined by their billing mode.

Billing mode

Billing is defined per billable operation, not per pipe. Most pipes carry a single operation, a waterfall pipe carries one per provider, and agent:run@1 stacks token operations and tool-call operations. Each operation has a mode, always or onSuccess, that determines when it costs credits. The catalog shows the mode for every pipe.

Mode `always`

The operation bills on every attempt, regardless of outcome. Credits are deducted even when the output fields are marked no_result. Failed calls are not billed. See field status for more info.

Mode `onSuccess`

The operation bills only when it produces a result: at least one output field marked completed. Errors and no_result cost nothing. Waterfall providers use this mode, which is why a waterfall only bills the provider that returned the value. See field status for more info.

AI pipe billing

AI pipes like prompt:run@1, email:write@1, and message:write@1 are billed by token usage, not at a flat price per run.

Input and output tokens are billed separately, in blocks of 100 tokens.
Each model tier (google-low, openai-high, anthropic-high) has its own credit price per block.
agent:run@1 bills the tokens of every agent step, plus a fee per tool call.

Short prompts with short answers cost a fraction of a credit. Long prompts over large fields (for example a full profile object) cost more. The pipe catalog shows a cost estimate for every AI pipe.

Search billing

Searches are billed per result, per page, or per search. The search catalog lists the mode and cost for every search.

Mode `per_result`

You are billed per search result. If a search request returned 500 entries you are billed 500 times the cost per result.

Mode `per_page`

You are billed once per page of results you fetch, regardless of how many entries the page contains.

Mode `per_search`

You are billed once per search, regardless of how many entries it returns.

Insufficient balance

If your credit balance is insufficient to complete an ongoing enrichment task, the entire task fails and you are billed for the enrichment performed up to the failure.

One-off purchases

You can purchase additional credits at your current subscription price. One-off credits can be purchased by users with active subscriptions.

To purchase one-off credits contact support@pipe0.com.

Credit rollover

You can hold up to 3x the monthly credit amount of your subscription in your account. When a refill would push your balance past this threshold, the excess is lost.

During subscription downgrades the credit rollover amount is lowered and the limit of your new subscription applies.

Negative balances

We do not offer negative balances (line of credit).

If you're building a system that requires auto-top-ups to remain operational at all times contact support@pipe0.com.

High-usage billing

High-usage billing lowers the per-operation credit price of high-traffic pipes and searches. You enroll an eligible operation into a discount tier, and every run of that operation bills at the lower price.

In the pipe catalog and search catalog, eligible operations show a "high volume from" price next to their standard cost. Open the price to see the full tier breakdown.

What qualifies

High-usage billing only changes the price of operations that run on a managed connection, where pipe0 supplies the provider key. Operations on your own connection are billed separately and never use tiers.

An operation qualifies when its standard price is at least 0.1 credits and the catalog lists discount tiers for it. Near-free operations do not qualify.

One operation can sit behind several pipes and searches. When you enroll it, every pipe and search that bills under that operation gets the lower price.

Tiers

An eligible operation has up to three tiers: level 1, level 2, and level 3. Each level is cheaper than the one before it, so level 3 gives the lowest price. The catalog cost table lists the exact price for each level.

Capacity and slots

Each paid plan includes a high-volume capacity, a fixed number of slots you can spend across all your enrollments. A deeper tier costs more slots. If an enrollment would push you past your capacity, pipe0 rejects the change. To free up slots, move an enrollment to a lower tier or remove it. Your plan features list your capacity.