Understand your AI token budget

Every AI feature, chat, plan generation, risk detection, agent activity, consumes AI tokens. Your organization’s allowance works like a prepaid balance, not a metered bill: you can never be surprised by an AI invoice.

The one-time bonus

Every plan includes a one-time AI token bonus, sized by your plan tier and the number of paid seats at the time it is granted. It does not renew monthly, and it does not grow when you add seats later; it is a starting balance to use the AI features for real before deciding how much AI your team needs.

Enterprise Plus organizations have unlimited AI usage and no token accounting.

See your balance

1. Open Organization Settings and go to the Billing tab.
2. The AI tokens card shows your remaining balance and labels it as the one-time bonus.

Buy more tokens

Owners and admins can top up the balance directly from the app:

1. Open Organization Settings → Billing and select Buy AI credit on the AI tokens card.
2. Choose an amount (fixed denominations from 5 to 100 USD) and complete the checkout. This is a one-time purchase, not a subscription, and works on every plan including Free.
3. The tokens appear as purchased credit next to your bonus balance. Purchased credit is spent first and is valid for 90 days from purchase.

When the balance runs out

AI features stop with a clear “tokens used up” message; nothing else in Onplana is affected, and no charge happens. To keep going, buy AI credit or upgrade your plan, the higher tier carries a larger one-time bonus.

Note

There is intentionally no automatic overage billing. Running out is a hard stop, not a surprise invoice, and topping up is always an explicit purchase you make.

Spending guardrails for admins

Admins can set a monthly cost cap on the organization’s AI usage in Organization Settings → AI and Usage: choose a USD ceiling and whether hitting it warns (email alerts as you approach and pass the cap) or blocks further AI usage for the month. This is a self-imposed guardrail your organization controls, separate from the token balance.

Builds spend the same balance

Building an app with Onplana Maker draws on this same balance: a build costs the tokens it actually uses, so a one-line tweak costs a fraction of a from-scratch app. There is no separate build currency and nothing extra to buy. See what a build costs for the details, including the Free plan’s daily build cap.

FAQs

Do unused tokens expire? Depends on where they came from:

• The one-time bonus does not expire; it simply depletes as your team uses AI features.
• Purchased credit is valid for 90 days from purchase, and is always spent before your bonus balance so nothing goes to waste.
• Earned credit (referral and reward credit in Onplana Maker) never expires.

Who can see usage? Owners and admins see the balance and usage on the Billing tab. Individual members just use the features.

Does every AI feature cost the same? No, costs scale with how much the AI reads and writes. A short chat answer costs little; generating a full project plan or building an app costs more.

Worked example: $20 credit purchase

1. Purchase: $20 buys 3.2 million tokens at the standard rate ($5 adds 800,000). The credit appears on your Billing tab.
2. Validity: purchased credit is valid for 90 days from purchase; unspent credit expires after that.
3. Drain order: purchased credit is spent first, then the one-time bonus, so paid-for tokens are never the ones left to expire.
4. What it covers: 3.2M tokens is roughly 3,000 chat questions, about 60 full project-plan generations, or well over a hundred app builds.
5. Buy more any time: purchases stack, and the oldest credit drains first.

Best practices

1. Watch the balance during heavy AI weeks. Plan generation, risk scanning, app builds, and agent activity add up quickly.
2. Set the cost cap to WARN before BLOCK. You get email alerts as usage approaches the cap before anything is hard-stopped.
3. Buy credit ahead of known-heavy periods. A $20-50 top-up comfortably covers a project kickoff with heavy AI planning.
4. Let the bonus carry the steady state. The bonus is finite; use purchased credit for spikes.
5. Check the usage breakdown. The Billing tab shows where the tokens are going, so you can see which feature consumes the most.

Troubleshooting / common pitfalls

• “Tokens used up” message. This is the hard stop, nothing is charged automatically. Buy credit or upgrade to keep going.
• Cost cap warning email but nothing blocked. WARN mode emails only. Switch to BLOCK mode if you want a hard limit.
• Purchased credit expired. Purchased credit unused after 90 days is gone; the one-time bonus and earned credit are unaffected.
• Bonus already exhausted. The bonus is one-time and does not renew monthly. Buy credit or upgrade for a larger bonus.

How this combines with other features

• Token budget + Cost cap. Cost cap is a self-imposed ceiling separate from token balance.
• Token budget + Plan changes. Upgrading grants a new bonus per plan tier. See Compare plans and upgrade.
• Token budget + AI features. Every AI feature consumes tokens. Chat, plan gen, risk scan, agents.
• Token budget + Admin oversight. Admin page shows per-feature breakdown.

Coming from another tool

Tool	Mapping
OpenAI API credits	Direct concept; prepaid balance
Anthropic API balance	Direct
Microsoft Copilot consumption	Adjacent (per-seat licensing differs)
Custom AI gateway	Onplana adds first-class accounting
Pay-as-you-go AI	Onplana is prepaid by design

Related

• Compare plans and upgrade, upgrade for more bonus
• Change your plan or billing cycle, plan mechanics
• Manage seats and guests, seats affect bonus size