AI Credits

AI inspections in LintPDF are metered using a credit system. Core preflight checks (500+ checks) stay unlimited on all paid plans. AI credits are a metered resource with two sources:

1. Plan-included monthly allotment — granted automatically when your Stripe subscription renews. Resets each billing cycle. See the table below.
2. Top-up credit packs — one-off Stripe Checkout purchases that roll over for 12 months.

Separately, LintPDF also meters file submissions (each preflighted PDF counts as one “file”). Plan-included monthly file allotments and one-off file packs use the same mechanism; see File Packs below.

Monthly Plan Allotments

Plan	AI credits / month	Files / month
Free	0	50
Viewer	0	150
Starter	0	500
Growth	500	5,000
Scale	2,500	25,000
Enterprise	25,000	Unlimited

Free, Viewer, and Starter plans ship without any included AI credits — Starter tenants who want AI inspections must either buy a credit pack (see below) or enable pay-per-use ($0.12/credit). Files-per-month allotments and AI-credit allotments are billed separately and have separate top-up packs.

Monthly allotments expire at the end of each billing cycle. Unused monthly credits do not roll over. Top-up purchases are separate and DO roll over (12-month expiry).

How Credits Are Consumed

Each AI inspection consumes credits when it runs:

Tier	Cost	Examples
Text	1 credit	Spell check, language detection, barcode decode, palette matching, duplicate detection
Vision	2 credits	FDA panel analysis, EU compliance, GHS pictogram detection, logo matching, NSFW screening, image quality

Credits are consumed per-inspection, per-file. If you run 5 Text inspections and 3 Vision inspections on a single file, that file consumes 5 + 6 = 11 credits.

Billing Modes

Pay-per-use

• $0.12 per credit
• No minimum purchase
• Billed to your payment method as credits are consumed
• Optional auto top-up: set a threshold and LintPDF automatically adds credits when your balance drops below it

Credit Packs (one-off top-ups)

Three fixed-size packs via Stripe Checkout. Each pack rolls over for 12 months from purchase date.

Pack	Credits	Price	Per Credit	Savings
Starter	500	$25	$0.050	baseline
Growth	2,000	$90	$0.045	10% off
Volume	10,000	$400	$0.040	20% off

Buy from the dashboard (Account → AI Credits → Buy more) or directly via API (see below). You can stack multiple packs.

Checking Your Balance

Via Dashboard

Navigate to Settings > AI Billing to view your current credit balance, consumption history, and billing mode.

Via API

curl https://api.lintpdf.com/api/v1/ai/credits \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer lpdf_..."

Response:

{
  "balance": 4250,
  "billing_mode": "package",
  "auto_topup": false,
  "consumed_this_month": 750,
  "consumed_total": 3250
}

Top-ups

Via Dashboard

Account → AI Credits → Buy more. Click a pack tile → redirected to Stripe Checkout → on success your credits land within ~10 seconds.

Via API

curl -X POST https://api.lintpdf.com/api/v1/ai/credits/topup \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer lpdf_..." \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"pack": "500"}'

Response:

{
  "checkout_url": "https://checkout.stripe.com/pay/cs_test_...",
  "session_id": "cs_test_...",
  "pack_size": 500,
  "usd_cents": 2500
}

Redirect the customer to checkout_url. When Stripe fires checkout.session.completed to the LintPDF webhook the package is inserted and credits become immediately available. Repeated calls with the same Stripe-Session never double-grant (idempotency via the unique index on stripe_session_id).

pack must be one of "500", "2000", "10000".

File Packs

Each PDF submission consumes one file from your monthly allotment. Once the monthly pool is empty, further submits either:

• Return 402 Payment Required — unless you have an active file pack or overage billing is enabled.
• Consume from a purchased file pack (FIFO across the pool).
• Incur overage charges (per-job rate, billed via Stripe metered usage) if overage_enabled=true.

File packs are sold via Stripe Checkout in the same way as credits:

Pack	Files	Price	Per File	Savings
Starter	500	$15	$0.030	baseline
Growth	2,500	$60	$0.024	20% off
Volume	10,000	$200	$0.020	33% off

curl -X POST https://api.lintpdf.com/api/v1/files/topup \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer lpdf_..." \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"pack": "500"}'

Check your file quota balance:

curl https://api.lintpdf.com/api/v1/files/quota \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer lpdf_..."

{
  "tenant_id": "...",
  "total_remaining": 1750,
  "monthly_allotment_remaining": 500,
  "purchased_remaining": 1250,
  "active_packages": 1,
  "monthly_allotment": 500
}

Low Balance Alerts

Set up Webhooks for credit balance notifications:

curl -X POST https://api.lintpdf.com/api/v1/webhooks \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer lpdf_..." \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "url": "https://your-app.com/webhook",
    "events": ["ai.credits.low", "ai.credits.depleted"]
  }'

What Happens When Credits Run Out

When your credit balance reaches zero:

• AI inspections are skipped (not queued)
• Core engine checks continue to run normally
• The Report includes an info noting which AI inspections were skipped due to insufficient credits
• Webhook ai.credits.depleted fires if configured