How Credits Work

Credits are the universal billing unit for all Rendobar jobs. Every operation — watermarking, transcoding, rendering — costs credits based on the job type and input/output duration.

Credit lifecycle

Pre-check — When you submit a job, Rendobar checks that your balance covers the estimated cost. No credits are deducted at this stage. If your balance is too low, the API returns 402 INSUFFICIENT_CREDITS.
Execution — The job runs. Your balance is not touched during processing.
Debit — On successful completion, the actual cost is calculated (based on real output duration) and atomically deducted from your balance.
Refund — If a job fails or is cancelled, no credits are charged. If credits were pre-deducted (rare edge case), they are refunded automatically.

Cost models

Different job types use different cost models:

Cost Model	How it works	Example job types
Per minute (output)	Credits scale with output video duration	watermark.add, transcode, caption.burn
Per minute (input)	Credits scale with input video duration	caption.extract, compliance.gdpr.redact
Flat rate	Fixed credit cost regardless of duration	thumbnail, qr.generate, compliance.moderate (image)
Per compute time	Credits based on actual processing time	raw.ffmpeg

Rollover

Unused balance rolls over to the next billing cycle, up to a cap:

The rollover cap is 2x your monthly allocation
Balance beyond the cap expires when your new monthly allocation is added
Example: Pro plan ($500/month) can accumulate up to $1,000

Overage

On paid plans, if you exceed your included balance, jobs continue to process and overage accrues at the same per-job rates. On the Free plan, jobs are rejected when balance runs out — no overage is allowed.

Checking your balance

curl https://api.rendobar.com/billing/balance \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer rb_live_YOUR_KEY"

{
  "data": {
    "balance": 75000000000,
    "rollover": 0
  }
}

The balance field is in nanodollars (1,000,000,000 = $1.00). The dashboard displays this as a formatted dollar amount.

Credits & Billing — plan details and pricing table
Job Types — per-type cost estimates