Credits & Minutes
How credits are counted
- 1 credit ≈ 1 second of generated audio (the exact charge is based on characters — see below)
- Displayed as minutes in the UI (60 credits = 1 minute)
- You're only charged for generations that succeed — if a generation fails or is cancelled, its credits are returned
Credits and points are the same thing — the app shows them as pts.
How the cost is calculated exactly
Because credits are charged before the audio is produced, the cost is estimated from your text length, not measured from the final audio file:
- App (web, mobile, and Studio):
credits = ⌈ characters ÷ 17 ⌉— about 17 characters per credit. - API:
credits = ⌈ characters ÷ 15 ⌉— about 15 characters per credit (a small premium for programmatic access).
⌈ ⌉ means round up to the next whole credit. Spoken audio averages roughly 15–17 characters per second, which is why "1 credit ≈ 1 second" is a close rule of thumb — but the exact charge always follows the character formula above, so a generation can cost slightly more or fewer credits than its final playback length.
Examples (app rate, 17 chars/credit):
| Text length | Credits charged |
|---|---|
| 17 characters | 1 |
| 170 characters | 10 |
| 1,000 characters | 59 |
At the API rate (15 chars/credit) those same lengths cost 2, 12, and 67 credits.
The model you pick changes the price: VocalLab Studio Flash costs ¾ and VocalLab Lite costs half of the formula above. VocalLab Studio and VocalLab Pro cost the full amount. See Voice Models.
Monthly credits vs. top-up credits
| Type | Expires? | Used first? |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly allowance | Yes — resets on billing date | Yes |
| Top-up pack | Never | After monthly runs out |
This means if you buy a top-up pack, your monthly credits are always used first, preserving your purchased credits. Unused monthly credits do not carry over to the next month.
Checking your balance
Your current balance is shown in the Studio top bar (Points left) and on the Billing page in the Studio sidebar, together with your next refill date.
Buying top-up credits
Top-ups work with any plan, including Free. Buy them on the Pricing page under Top-ups, or in Studio under Billing → Top up:
| Pack | Price | Per minute |
|---|---|---|
| +20 min | $5 | $0.25/min |
| +200 min | $30 | $0.15/min |
| +1,000 min | $119 | $0.12/min |
What uses credits
- Text to Speech generation (Studio, API and MCP)
- Re-generating the same text counts as a new generation
- Voice Design previews (each run generates three variations)
- Speech to Text — 15 credits per minute of audio
- Video dubbing — analysis, translation and voicing (see How to Dub a Video)
- Writing a podcast script with AI (see What a Podcast Costs)
- Analyzing an imported ebook for an audiobook — 1 credit per 500 characters (50-credit minimum)
What does NOT use credits
- Creating a voice clone (it uses a clone slot, not credits)
- Playing back already-generated audio
- Downloading audio you already generated
- Browsing voices and listening to samples