Understanding Usage
This guide explains how Runbear measures and bills your usage, including credits and interactors.
Credits
Credits are the currency your agents use for billing. Every interaction with your AI agents consumes credits.
What Affects Credit Consumption?
Credit consumption depends on two main factors:
-
Task Complexity
- Simple Q&A using knowledge bases consumes fewer credits
- Complex tasks using tool integrations (MCP) consume more credits
-
AI Model
- More intelligent models are slower and cost more credits
- Simpler models are faster and more cost-effective
Typical Credit Usage
| Workload | Credit Range |
|---|---|
| Q&A (knowledge base) | 10–20 credits |
| Complex tool/MCP calls | 30–50+ credits |
Actual consumption may vary based on complexity and data volume.
Optimizing Credit Usage
Choose the right model for your use case to optimize costs:
- Claude Sonnet: Best for complex reasoning and tool orchestration
- Claude Haiku: Ideal for simple Q&A or straightforward tool calls — uses approximately 1/3 of the credits compared to Sonnet
For agents that mainly respond with knowledge base answers, switching to Haiku can noticeably lower your credit usage—often with little to no loss in answer quality.
How to Monitor Your Usage
You can track your credit consumption in two places:
- Billing Page — View your overall credit consumption
- Credit Usage Dashboard — See detailed breakdowns including:
- Credit usage per agent
- Number of users utilizing each agent
When You Run Out of Credits
When you run out of credits, your agents will pause. What happens next depends on your plan:
| Plan | What to Do |
|---|---|
| Free | Upgrade to a paid plan to continue |
| Paid | Enable pay-as-you-go to continue using credits beyond your plan's included amount. You can set a spending limit to control costs — the maximum limit varies by plan. |
We send email notifications when your credit balance is low to help you avoid interruptions.
Credits do not roll over between billing cycles. Unused credits expire at the end of each billing period.
Interactors
An Interactor is an end user who queries your AI agents. Runbear tracks monthly interactors - unique users who have interacted with your agents within a billing month.
How Interactors Are Counted
- Each unique user counts as one interactor per month
- The same user querying multiple times only counts once
- Interactor counts reset at the start of each billing cycle
For detailed pricing information, visit our Pricing page.