How credits work
Every package includes a monthly pot of credits. This page explains what they are, what things cost, and what happens if you run out.
A credit is what you spend when we find something
Searching Ainstein is free. Browsing results is free. Sending what you find to your CRM is free. You spend credits at the moment Ainstein does the expensive part: revealing a contact detail, or sending ai off to work through the database for you.
If nothing is found, nothing is charged.
What is included
Credits are included with every licence. By default each person gets an equal share of the account’s monthly allowance. On Insight and Intelligence, admins can move credits between people, so a heavy user can draw on a light user’s share. On Discovery, each person’s share is fixed. Credits reset on the first day of each billing month and do not carry over.
Extra credits bought through auto top-up go into a shared balance for the whole account. Anyone can draw on it once their own share is used.
| Package | Credits per licence, each month | A 10-licence account |
|---|---|---|
| Discovery | 200 | 2,000 |
| Insight | 500 | 5,000 |
| Intelligence | 1,000 | 10,000 |
Other allowances, per licence per month
| Allowance | Discovery | Insight | Intelligence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Saved candidate searches | 10 | 25 | 50 |
| Saved job searches | - | 3 | 10 |
| People monitored for signals | - | 500 | 2,000 |
| Records synced to your CRM | 50 | 100 | 200 |
Syncing does not use credits, but it is capped so the database cannot be copied out in bulk.
What things cost
One balance covers everything, so you are never holding two kinds of credit and guessing which one runs out first.
Swipe to see the full table →
| Action | Credits | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Free, always | ||
| Standard search | 0 | Search and filter the people, company and jobs databases as much as you like. |
| Viewing a profile | 0 | Everything on the record except the contact details you have not unlocked. |
| Sync to your CRM | 0 | Send a person or company into your CRM, and keep it updated. |
| Signals and alerts | 0 | Being told when someone moves, when a job reposts, when a saved search hits. |
| Contact details | ||
| Work email | 1 | A verified email address at their current employer. |
| Personal email | 3 | An address that survives a job change. |
| Mobile number | 10 | A direct mobile. The hardest thing to find and the most expensive for us to source. |
| ai in the app | ||
| Agentic ai search | 3 | Three credits each time you ask. A back-and-forth conversation that lands on a good shortlist is usually six or seven questions, so around 20 credits. |
| Over MCP, using your own ai | ||
| Enriched search | 2 | A search that returns enriched data from our database, run from your own tools. |
| ATS search | 1 | A search against your connected ATS. |
| A search that finds nothing | 0 | A search that returns no result is never charged. |
| Contact unlocks | As in app | Work email 1, personal 3, mobile 10, the same rates as inside Ainstein. |
| Per ai turn | 0 | No per-turn charge over MCP. You connect your own model and pay for it directly. |
Agentic ai search costs 3 credits a turn in the app because Roi-AI pays for the model. Over MCP there is no per-turn charge, because you bring your own model and pay for it directly. Enriched and ATS searches over MCP are charged as above.
A search that returns no result costs nothing. If a contact detail you unlock turns out to be wrong, report it in the app and the credits come back to your balance.
What 500 credits actually buys
A recruiter on Insight, working a normal month:
- 100 work emails · 100 credits
- 20 mobile numbers for the roles that need a call · 200 credits
- 10 agentic ai searches, conversational, around 20 credits each · 200 credits
- Unlimited standard searching and signals, plus syncing within your monthly allowance · nothing
That is 500 credits. Most desks land under it. The ones that do not are usually running high-volume outreach, and those teams tend to be on Intelligence.
If you run out
You do not stop working. When your included credits run low, auto top-up buys a pack of extra credits at US$0.04 per credit and charges the card on file. Packs are 500 to 10,000 credits; we set a default pack size and a monthly top-up limit to suit your account size, and your admin can change either or turn auto top-up off.
When the monthly limit is reached, paid actions pause until the admin raises it or the month resets. Standard searching, syncing and signals keep working. Purchased credits are valid for 12 months.
On Insight and Intelligence, admins can also set a limit per person, so one enthusiastic user, or an agent left running over MCP, cannot use up the shared top-up balance in a week.
Extra credits are US$0.04 each, in your subscription currency, the same on every package.
Common questions
- Do unused credits roll over?
- No. The balance resets at the start of each billing month.
- Can I buy credits in advance instead?
- Yes. Admins can buy a pack at any time from billing settings, or leave auto top-up on and let it happen when needed. Packs are priced at the published credit rate and last 12 months.
- Can I get more agentic ai search without paying more per credit?
- Moving up a package is the cheaper route. Insight includes two and a half times the credits of Discovery, and Intelligence five times, for a much smaller step up in licence cost.
- If I unlock the same person twice, do I pay twice?
- No. Once a detail is unlocked on your account it stays unlocked for everyone on it.
- What if my agent runs away over MCP?
- The monthly top-up limit and the per-user limit both apply to MCP. When either is hit, the action in progress completes, the next paid action is refused with a message naming the limit reached, and nothing more is charged until the month resets or an admin lifts the limit.
- Who can see what the team is spending?
- Admins see usage by person and by action in settings, on every package.