Credits & plans

What a credit is

A credit is one cent of measured run cost. The pipeline records what a job actually consumed — the AI calls, the GPU seconds, the compute — converts that to credits and withdraws them from whoever is paying. A run that burns $4.37 of real work withdraws 437 credits.

Two consequences follow, and both matter more than any price list. Credits are charged after a run, from what it used, not reserved when you press send. And the same prompt run twice will not cost exactly the same, because the measurement is of real work, not of a fixed tariff.

The figure the interface shows you before you submit is an estimate built into the addon. The figure that was really charged rides the completion line: Job 1a2b3c4d complete, with the credits the cloud withdrew printed beside it. That line is the authority, not the estimate. Look for it in the Design composer's thread or the Cloud Activity popup — cloud lines are deliberately kept out of the iCity Logs editor, which carries the engine and the addon only.

What costs nothing

The whole of Draft runs on your own machine, in the engine process beside Blender. It needs no account, no connection and no credits. Nothing you draw, shape or re-shape is metered.

• —Roads, junctions, regions, lots, massing and every generation parameter that drives them. Drawing, splitting, merging, reshaping, deleting, undoing.
• —Assigning a material or a prop you already have in your library to a category. The dressed viewport re-skins as you assign.
• —Start with default theme on the Design Theme screen, which copies the theme bundled inside the addon, and Append from a project, which copies another local project's theme files into this one. Both are file copies followed by a local link.
• —Re-applying outputs that are already sitting in the project folder. There is no button for it: it runs by itself after a job finishes and after an append, and the operator behind it (Dress City from Outputs) is reachable only from Blender's operator search.
• —Use this theme at the CHOOSE A THEME gate. It adopts a theme the search found in the library and generates nothing.
• —Project sync — the footer button that uploads the project folder with a message. It needs you signed in, but it is not a generation job.
• —Saving with the header S button, opening a project, and everything else in the project popup.

The Design module is locked until you are signed in and the scene holds a city, so the free parts of Design still need an account to reach. Draft does not.

What spends credits

Anything that makes an asset that did not exist before runs on Parametra's servers and is metered. The credit figures below are the ones the addon shows before you submit, with the measured spread where measurements exist.

Generate Model and Generate PBR — the buttons that fill in the piece an asset is missing — are submitted as a prop job and a material job respectively, so expect those lanes. One press on a set of assets submits one job per asset, each with its own analysis fee.

A regeneration of a material or prop is a full job in its lane; it does not cost less than making the asset the first time. The one-credit analysis fee is charged on every accepted submit, whatever the job turns out to cost, and it is charged again on every re-roll.

City sync is the header sync button, and unlike project sync it really is automatic — and it is on by default. It fires about two seconds after you return to Design with a changed draft, at most once every thirty seconds, and it refuses when nothing changed. It generates nothing new, but it is still a paid cloud job, so if you do not want it spending on its own, set the ▾ beside the button to Manual. See Re-dressing after a change.

Budgeting for a theme

A theme is the only job large enough to need planning. Budget 220 to 275 credits and about twenty minutes for one.

The Generate with AI popup prints ~219 credits · ~18 min on the Theme tab. That number is a fixed constant in the addon, averaged from ten completed theme jobs in August 2026, and it runs low: measured full themes have landed at 272–274 credits. Budget for the upper end, not for the number on screen — nothing in the popup is a quote from the server.

Re-rolls are extra. Approving guides and regenerating guides both spend credits, and each re-roll is its own job with its own moderation pass, so a theme you re-roll twice costs meaningfully more than the figures above. If a library theme comes back at the CHOOSE A THEME gate and it suits you, Use this theme adopts it without spending the generation credits at all.

The full theme flow, gate by gate, is in Generating a theme.

Where to read your balance

Two places in the addon and one on the website. The website is the one that shows credits as a count; the addon shows the percentage of this period's allowance that is gone.

1. In the composer, the small ring beside the prompt is credit usage. Its tooltip reads Credits: 42% used · 3.0 cr this session. The session figure is added up from this Blender session's own log — the one-credit fee at each submit plus what each completion reported — so it resets when you restart Blender and it is not a reading of the server ledger.

   credits-and-plans-composer-credit-ring.png

   Close crop of the Design composer's icon row under the prompt box, mid-session with at least one finished job, the pointer resting on the credit ring so its tooltip reads 'Credits: NN% used · N.N cr this session'.

   /docs-shots/blender/

2. Open the account popup from the header user icon. The Account section shows your plan as a pill, then a USAGE block: the percentage used, a bar, and a line underneath reading Resets in … or Resets when your plan renews. When your credits are pooled the line adds · shared with your organization. The bar turns amber past 70% and red past 90%.

   credits-and-plans-account-popup-usage.png

   The account popup open from the header user icon, signed in on a paid plan with more than 70% of the allowance spent: the Account section with the plan pill, the USAGE block underneath showing the percentage, the amber bar, and the 'Resets in …' line below it.

   /docs-shots/blender/

3. On the website, the Account Overview tab is the ledger view: Plan, Credits available, Used this period, and a Recent activity list of individual credit movements. Pooled movements are tagged ORG.

   credits-and-plans-website-account-overview.png

   The Account page on parametra.net in a browser, signed in on a Team plan, Overview tab selected: the Plan, Credits available and Used this period figures across the top, the Manage plan button, and a Recent activity list below with at least four credit movements, one of them carrying the ORG tag.

   /docs-shots/universal/

The addon's percentage is refreshed when it reads your profile and when a submit gets a reply, so it is as fresh as your last cloud action. If it looks stale, reopen the account popup.

When you run out

Read the warning below first, because it is the part that decides how you should work. Nothing in the addon checks your balance before it submits, and the live pipeline has no balance gate either — the code that refused a job for credits belongs to a retired job handler. So in practice you do not run out; you go under.

The addon still knows how to be refused, and if the gate ever comes back this is what you will see. The reply comes back as a 402 and the addon turns it into Not enough credits: the job is marked failed and the composer thread prints 402 — Not enough credits. When the reply carries your usage figure the addon appends it to the stored reason — “Your credit usage is at 97%.”

A submit that is refused this way charges nothing. Fix it by freeing up credits or changing your plan, then submit again; your prompt is still in the composer.

The other refusals print the same way and are not about money. A 401 — Session expired means sign in again; 422 — Prompt rejected by content policy means edit the prompt. Neither charges generation credits, and your prompt is kept.

Plans, seats and pooled credits

Credits arrive with a plan and reset each period. The tiers are Free, Indie, Studio and Team, plus the Founding Studio launch offer; the annual variants are the same tier billed yearly. Current allowances and prices live on the pricing page — that is the one place they are maintained.

Team is priced per seat with a minimum of three seats, and its credits are pooled across the organization. The website calls that group your Team; the addon and the API call it your Organization. It is the same thing.

When you belong to an organization, a job spends your own balance if you have one. Members who have never held a personal balance spend the organization pool instead. Either way the addon says which is happening: the Organization card inside the account popup's Account section reads Credits are shared across the organization or You have your own credit allowance, beside your role. That card is drawn only when you belong to an organization.

Changing plan, seats and payment details is done on the website, from the Manage plan button on your Account Overview. The addon has no purchase flow; its account popup links out to the pricing page under Our products.