Operate
Billing
Prepaid credits, pegged to the dollar. Every constraint here is stated before you pay.
| Term | Value | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Peg | 1,000 credits = $1 | Fixed. Provider price cuts make models cheaper in credits. |
| Direct Robinhood Chain minimum | $0.50 | Relay and other crypto providers start at $5. |
| Payment methods | Account-specific | Checkout shows only methods reported available by the API. |
| Withdrawals | None | Credits buy inference. There is no redemption path. |
| Expiry | Never | Expiring credits is a dark pattern. Ours do not. |
The peg
1,000 credits = $1, fixed. Provider price cuts make models cheaper in credits. Charges are metered in nano-USD, so a 500-token embedding does not round to zero, and every response reports its exact cost in usage.cost and the x-microrouter-cost-usd header.
Deposits only. No withdrawals, by design
There is no withdrawal endpoint: not disabled, absent. A service that pays money out is a money transmitter, which is what ends cheap and KYC-free. Direct Robinhood Chain payments start at $0.50. Relay starts at $5 because of its flat fee. Lose an accountless key and the balance goes with it, permanently.
Refunds: service credit, never cash
The remedy for our mistakes is service credit to your balance, never cash. There is no cash path out by design. The full policy, including wrong-chain deposit recovery, is at /legal/refunds.
Cards and chargebacks
When card checkout is configured, cards carry a 3.5% fee and a $20 minimum. Unconfigured card checkout is not shown as available. Card-funded credit is tracked separately: a chargeback posts a reversing ledger transaction, negative balance if already spent, and suspends the account pending resolution. First card deposits are velocity-capped. The cap rises with account age.
Running low
A balance below a request’s estimated cost gets a pre-request 402. The x-microrouter-balance-usd header is on every response. Accountless users can also opt into browser push or verified-email alerts.
Where possible we clamp max_tokens to what the balance affords, run the request, and flag it with x-microrouter-max-tokens-clamped: true. Your last $0.30 still works.