# Billing and credits

> Prepaid credits, the three price tiers, what is free, how reservations and refunds work, and auto-recharge.

Source: https://sightradar.com/docs/billing

SightRadar is prepaid. You buy credits, billable calls draw them down, and there is no subscription or minimum. **1 credit = $0.00001**, so 100,000 credits are one dollar. Current USD rates and a cost calculator are on the [pricing page](/pricing).

## Per photo processed, never per face

A photo with zero or five faces is one charge. Almost every endpoint processes exactly one photo per request, so in practice you pay per request. The one exception is `POST /v1/compare`, which takes two images and is charged for each image it actually processes; a side passed as a precomputed embedding is free.

## Tiers

| Tier              | Applies to                                                                       | Credits                               |
| ----------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------- |
| Real-time         | every synchronous face call: index, search, selfie registration, detect, compare | 93 per photo                          |
| Search by face id | `search-by-id` against a registered selfie                                       | 62 per search                         |
| Batch             | `POST /v1/batches`, deferrable and URL-only                                      | 62 per photo                          |
| Storage           | stored faceprints                                                                | billed daily per million stored faces |

Control-plane calls are free: collections, wallet, usage, keys, webhooks, batch status. They still need a valid key.

## Reserve, settle, refund

Each billable call **reserves** its credits up front, **settles** on success, and **refunds** if the engine fails. You are never charged for a `4xx` or `5xx`. A successful call with no faces in the image is a settled charge.

## Running out

When the wallet hits zero, billable calls return `402 Payment Required` and control-plane calls keep working. Every billable response carries `X-Credits-Remaining` so you can watch the balance inline, and `GET /v1/wallet` returns it on demand.

Batch photos that failed on `insufficient_credits` are not lost: after topping up, [requeue them](/docs/api/batch/preview-or-execute-a-failed-photo-retry-wave) in one preview-then-execute call.

## Auto-recharge

In **Billing** you can set a threshold and a top-up amount. When the balance falls below the threshold, the wallet is topped up automatically against the payment mandate you authorised. The same settings are readable and writable over the API at `GET`/`PUT /portal/auto-recharge`. The minimum top-up is $10.

## Idempotent retries are free

Send an `Idempotency-Key` header on billable calls. A replay under the same key is never re-charged and never re-runs the model. See [core concepts](/docs/concepts#idempotency) for what each operation returns on replay.

## Watching spend

* `GET /v1/usage` aggregates calls and credits per operation over the last N days.
* `GET /v1/usage/daily` returns a dense daily time series, operations and storage as separate series, ready for charting.
* The console's **Usage** page renders both.

## Refunds

There are no monetary refunds; verified billing errors are corrected as wallet credits. The full policy is at [/refund](/refund).