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Credits are a prepaid balance that funds usage of Pinata-hosted models — both inside an agent (the Pinata provider) and through the Inference endpoint directly. Token usage draws the balance down; when it runs out, those requests fail until you add more.
Credits only apply to Pinata-hosted models. Agents that use your own provider keys (OpenAI, Anthropic, OpenRouter, etc. — see Secrets) bill through that provider, not credits. The free tier doesn’t use credits either.

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How credits are consumed

  • Usage is metered per token across prompt and completion, at each model’s published rates — see Models for current pricing.
  • When you run out of credits, Pinata-hosted requests return 402 until you top up. Requests against your own provider keys are unaffected.
All credit routes authenticate with your standard Pinata JWT.

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Check your balance

curl https://agents.pinata.cloud/v0/credits/balance \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $PINATA_JWT"
Response
{ "total": 100.0, "loaned": 0.5, "available": 99.5 }
available is what you can spend right now — total minus loaned (credits held against in-flight requests). Values are in credits.

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Top up

Buy credits from the Billing dashboard in the Agents app. Purchases are charged through Stripe against the payment method on file, and your balance updates as soon as the payment clears.
Buying credits in the Agents app Billing dashboard

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Auto top-up

Auto top-up keeps the balance from running dry by automatically purchasing more credits when it drops below a threshold — useful for production agents and Inference traffic you don’t want interrupted. You can set it up in the Billing dashboard of the Agents app, or via the API below.
SettingRules
ThresholdWhen available drops below this, a top-up triggers. Must be at least 5, or null
AmountHow many credits to buy each time it triggers. Positive integer, or null
Set both to null to disable auto top-up.

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Configure auto top-up

curl -X PUT https://agents.pinata.cloud/v0/credits/topup/config \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $PINATA_JWT" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{ "threshold": 10, "amount": 50 }'
Response
{ "ok": true }
Read the current config with GET /v0/credits/topup/config:
Response
{ "threshold": 10, "amount": 50 }
Auto top-up charges the payment method on file whenever the threshold is crossed. Set the threshold and amount deliberately so a runaway agent can’t trigger repeated charges.

Inference

The Pinata LLM endpoint credits pay for

Agent Models

Pinata-hosted vs. bring-your-own-key