Credits & billing

How Wavemaker charges — dual-meter credits, reserve and settlement, refunds, cancellation, and plans.

Last updated August 12, 2026

Wavemaker meters usage in credits. Plans include a monthly credit allowance; packs top you up. Current plan pricing is on the pricing page.

The reserve → settle model

Media generation costs vary with what actually gets produced, so billing is two-phase and always in your favor:

  1. Reserve. When a run starts, credits are reserved — an upper-bound hold from the dual-meter preflight (GPU-seconds + partner API units).
  2. Settle. When it finishes, the reservation settles to the actual recorded cost. The difference is released back.

Consequences you can rely on:

  • Infrastructure failure zero-charges that settle (the run does not keep the hold).
  • Cancelling settles to actual. Stop a run halfway and you pay only for what was already produced.
  • No surprise overruns. The reserve is the ceiling. If a later step cannot be paid, the group parks rather than running free.
  • Authoring is free. Classify, Enhance, Surprise-me, and Catalog Guide do not take a generation hold.

What costs what

Costs scale with the operation:

  • GPU time on the Comfy runner (class L40S / H100 / CPU).
  • Partner calls — image/video/audio vendors, Firecrawl search, QC vision where metered.
  • Assemble — Remotion render is a direct debit when compose runs (parks on debit-fail; resume reuses the stored render).
  • Iterate — priced by the leaf you redo/animate/extend/edit, not a full re-film.
  • Catalog campaigns — feed × template variants, quoted before engage.
  • Training Studio — dataset + job prices shown before you start; failed jobs refund.

Every generation’s actual cost is visible in Account usage, itemized per meter.

Plans & gating

  • Free — try the product; includes starter credits. Library storage 10 GiB.
  • Paid plans — monthly credit allowances, 50 GiB library, API keys, Training Studio where the plan includes it. Org BYOK is not on platform (BYOK).
  • Credit packs never expire.

Team billing

Credits belong to your organization — every member draws from the shared balance, and admins see per-member usage.