Core concepts
Credits & billing
Credits are the unit of cost in SteadyShot. Every paid action deducts credits from your balance; expensive things like character creation are free so you can iterate without burning budget.
What costs what
| Action | Credits |
|---|---|
| Create character | Free |
| Create brand kit | Free |
| AI descriptor auto-fill / refinement | Free |
| Generate reference image (1 view) | 1 |
| Generate scene | 1 |
| Generate scene with brand kit | 1 |
| Generate multi-character scene (2-4 chars) | 2 |
| Generate scene with both character + brand | 2 |
| Storybook (per page) | 1 |
| Vary scene (1-4 variants) | 1 per variant |
| Marketplace purchase | Seller-set price |
Plans
- Free — 20 starter credits. Cap of 3 active API keys.
- Creator — $49/month or $490/year (~17% off). 600 credits refreshed every billing cycle. Cap of 25 active API keys.
Subscription credits reset each cycle and don’t roll over. One-off credit packs (below) DO roll over — they stay on your account forever.
One-off credit packs
- 200 credits for $15
- 500 credits for $30 (~20% off per credit)
- 1500 credits for $80 (~30% off per credit)
Top-ups stack on top of subscription credits. Useful when you’re mid-storybook and want to push through without upgrading. Buy from /pricing.
Marketplace earnings
When someone buys a character you listed, you earn 85% of the sale price as credits (15% platform fee). Earnings post to your balance instantly and appear in usage_logs as marketplace_sale events. See Marketplace.
Checking your balance
- In the UI — the credit pill in the top nav shows current balance; click it for the pricing page.
- API —
GET /api/creditsreturns{ credits, plan }.
Out of credits? Most endpoints return
402 Payment Required with the remaining balance. Tools like the Figma plugin will prompt you to top up rather than failing silently.