# Credits and billing

LowRouter is pre-paid. You top up a credit balance, the gateway debits
that balance per request, and the balance is your single source of
truth for spend.

## Credits

A credit is a fractional unit of EUR: 1 credit = €0.01, so €5 of credits
adds 500 credits. Credits and balances are always denominated in EUR, and
checkout is in EUR.

At checkout, a flat payment-processing and platform fee is added to the credit
amount — the same for every payment method and region — and VAT is added on top
where applicable. The all-in price is shown before you pay; every euro of credit
is yours to spend in full once delivered.

Credits do not expire. Refunds for accidental top-ups are handled
case-by-case via the support email on the
[legal page](/impressum) within 14 days.

The current balance is shown on the dashboard, on the credits page,
and in the response of every request via the `X-Credit-Balance`
header.

## What a request costs

The cost of a request is:

```
upstream_provider_price_per_token × tokens
+ platform_fee_per_token × tokens
```

Both components are quoted per 1K tokens, separately for prompt and
completion. The prices visible on the model browser and the model
pages already include the platform fee. The breakdown is also visible
on each transaction's detail page.

A few details worth knowing:

- **Cached prompt tokens** (when an upstream provider supports prompt
  caching) are charged at the upstream's cached rate. The platform fee
  is unchanged.
- **Failed requests** that produced no upstream charge consume zero
  credits. A 4xx from the upstream that did consume tokens (rare) is
  passed through to your bill.
- **Streaming responses** are charged on the same usage numbers as a
  non-streaming response — total tokens, not per-chunk.

## Top up

**Dashboard → Credits → Add credits**, then complete the Stripe-hosted
checkout. Card and SEPA Direct Debit (EU accounts) are supported.

The amount you select is exclusive of VAT. The invoice produced after
payment shows the net amount, the VAT amount, and the gross total. VAT
treatment follows the country and (where applicable) VAT number on
your billing profile.

## Invoices

After every successful top-up, an invoice is generated and emailed.
The same invoices are downloadable as PDF from **Dashboard →
Invoices**.

If you operate on behalf of a company:

1. **Settings → Billing** — set the legal name, billing address, and
   VAT number.
2. Invoices issued from that point onwards carry the company details.
3. Past invoices can be re-issued with the corrected billing block on
   request via support.

## Pricing changes

Upstream provider prices change. We update the prices on the model
browser and in the routing engine within one business day of an
upstream price change going live. The dashboard records the
per-request price at the moment of the request, so historical bills
are stable even when current prices change.

The platform fee is published per model on the model browser. Material
changes to the platform fee are announced at least 30 days in advance
to the email on the account.

## What we don't bill for

- Failed authentication, rate-limited requests, or key-limit hits —
  zero credits.
- Health checks (`HEAD /docs`, `HEAD /api/v1/models`, etc.) — zero
  credits.
- Dashboard browsing, key management, or any control-plane action —
  zero credits.

## Refunds

Refunds for unspent credit balances are not processed automatically.
Contact support if you need to wind down an account; we'll process the
refund of the remaining balance to the original payment method,
subject to a 14-day cooling-off limit on the most recent top-up under
EU consumer law.

## Tax

LowRouter is operated by Carbonifer SAS, a French entity. VAT is
charged at the rate applicable to your billing country. EU B2B
customers with a valid VAT number are subject to reverse charge (no
VAT on the invoice). Non-EU customers receive an invoice without VAT.