Usage and Credits

Paperful uses credits to measure processing and compute usage across the platform.

Instead of billing separately for every underlying service involved in processing a document, Paperful translates operations into a single, predictable unit.

Credits are used for operations such as document processing, understanding and rendering.

How credits work

Every workspace has a credit balance.

When you perform a billable operation, the corresponding number of credits is deducted from your balance.

For example, processing a document might involve:

Paperful handles the infrastructure behind these operations. You only pay for the resulting usage.

Credit usage

The following table shows how common operations consume credits.

Tokens are used for operations such as AI input, output, and embedding. The cost in credits depends on the number of tokens processed.

Some operations have variable costs because the amount of work depends on the document.

For example, a 10-page PDF containing only text will generally use fewer credits than a 10-page PDF containing dozens of tables, charts, and images.

Example

Consider a 10-page report containing two tables and one chart.

10 pages        x credits
 2 tables       x credits + tokens
 1 chart        x credit + tokens
──────────────────────────────────
Total      13 credits + tokens

Search indexing and other optional operations may consume additional credits.

The exact usage is recorded in your workspace so you can understand where your credits are being spent.

Included credits

Every plan includes credits that can be used across Paperful.

Paid plans receive better credit pricing as usage grows.

Unused included credits reset according to your billing cycle unless otherwise specified by your plan.

Additional credits

If your workload exceeds the credits included with your plan, you can purchase additional credits.

Additional usage is charged according to your plan's credit rate.

This means you don't need to predict your exact document volume before getting started.

For workloads that consistently require more credits, upgrading your plan will usually provide a lower effective cost per credit.

Monitoring usage

You can monitor usage from the Console.

The usage dashboard shows:

• Amount of papers and pages
• Current credit usage
• Credits used during the billing cycle
• API requests
• Storage usage
• Billing cycle

Usage information is also available programmatically through the SDKs and API.

When credits run out

Paperful checks your available balance before starting operations that consume credits.

If there aren't enough credits available, the operation won't start.

The API returns an error that can be handled by your application:

{
  "error": {
    "code": "insufficient-credits",
    "message": "The workspace doesn't have enough credits to perform this operation."
  }
}

Existing papers remain available. You can continue retrieving, searching, and downloading previously processed content.

Add credits or upgrade your plan to resume processing.

Credits vs. storage

Credits and storage are measured separately.

Credits represent work performed by Paperful, such as processing pages, understanding document content, and generating embeddings.

Storage represents the amount of data (in bytes) retained by your workspace.

For example, uploading and processing a document may consume both credits and storage, while retrieving that document later consumes neither additional processing credits nor additional storage.

Enterprise usage

Enterprise plans can support custom credit volumes, higher processing concurrency, increased storage, and negotiated usage rates.

For large or predictable workloads, contact us to discuss your requirements.