Platform

Billing and Credits

Prepaid credits, payment methods, auto top-up, and receipts

EmpirioLabs AI uses a prepaid balance system. You add funds in USD and API usage debits your balance based on per-model pricing.

How credits work

  1. Top up — add funds through the dashboard Billing page.
  2. Use the API — each request debits credits based on the model’s pricing (tokens, images, seconds, etc.).
  3. Monitor — check your balance and usage history on the dashboard, or call GET /v1/account/usage with an API key.

If your account runs out of credits, API requests will return a 402 Payment Required / insufficient_credits error until you add more.

Top up credits

Use the dashboard Billing page to add funds. If you top up 10 USD, your account balance increases by 10 USD before any volume bonus. You can add any amount between 5 USD and 2,500 USD per transaction. Supported payment methods include:

  • Credit and debit cards
  • Apple Pay
  • PayPal
  • Cash App
  • Crypto
  • and more

International payments are accepted and automatically converted to USD at the current exchange rate.

Volume bonuses

Top-up amountBonus
1,000 USD++5% bonus
2,000 USD++10% bonus

For example, adding 1,000 USD gives your account a 1,050 USD balance increase.

You may see “WHOP*EMPIRIO” on your card statement.

Auto top-up

Auto top-up automatically purchases more credits when your balance drops below a threshold you configure.

Requirements:

  • A saved card on file (added via the Billing page)
  • Minimum threshold: 5 USD
  • Minimum top-up amount: 2x your threshold. For example, a 10 USD threshold requires a top-up amount of at least 20 USD.

Only card payment methods support automatic off-session billing. PayPal, Apple Pay, and other methods require manual checkout.

When auto top-up succeeds or fails, EmpirioLabs sends a confirmation email.

Cancellation policy

Once a request is accepted, billing settles for the full request whether or not you wait for the response. The only exception is for our Native Inference chat models, listed below.

Streaming requests (chat, completions, messages, responses, SSE audio). When you abort the connection by clicking Stop in the playground, calling AbortController.abort() from the SDK, or losing the network, the request keeps running upstream and bills for the full message when generation finishes. Cancelling stops you from receiving further chunks; it does not stop the model.

Async media generation (image, video, audio). These return a job_id immediately and run in the background. Cancelling the polling request only stops you from receiving the result; the worker continues generating and the job bills for the full output when it finishes.

Per-message and per-call models (some research, agent, and fixed-fee endpoints). The full per-call fee is incurred at the moment the request is accepted.

Exception for Native Inference chat models (gemma-4-26b-a4b, qwen3-5-9b, qwen3-5-4b). These models run on EmpirioLabs infrastructure and bill only for the tokens produced up to the point of cancellation.

Receipts

  • Payment confirmation — you receive an email receipt for every successful credit purchase.
  • Usage records — per-request cost records are available in the dashboard Usage Logs page and through GET /v1/account/usage.
  • Statement descriptor — charges appear as “WHOP*EMPIRIO” on your bank statement.