Why we bill on-demand usage at the provider's list price

The problem with credits

Most AI tools sell usage in their own currency: credits, fast requests, premium requests, sometimes with a different multiplier per model. It looks simple on the pricing page and becomes confusing the moment you try to work out what a single agent run actually cost.

Credits also hide the price. When a provider cuts its prices, a credit system doesn't have to pass that on. When a tool changes its multipliers, your effective price changes without the headline number moving at all.

What list price means

Every model provider publishes a price per million tokens, usually split into a few kinds of token:

• Input tokens: your prompt, the files the agent reads and the conversation so far.
• Output tokens: what the model writes back, including code and explanations.
• Cached tokens: input the provider has seen recently, usually billed at a fraction of the normal input price. More on that in prompt caching, explained.

Once your included usage is used up, Flintr bills each request at exactly those published prices. When a provider lowers its price, your next request is cheaper too.

Where our margin comes from

From your subscription. Pro, Pro+ and Ultra each include a monthly amount of usage, and the subscription also pays for the editor, Tab completions, background agents and everything else we build.

That structure matters. If we made money on every token, we'd have a quiet incentive to nudge you towards more expensive models or longer agent runs. Because we don't, Auto is free to pick the cheapest model that will do the job well.

What you see in the editor

Every chat message and agent run shows the model that answered, the tokens used and the cost in dollars. The usage dashboard shows the same numbers by day and by model, and the monthly invoice has one line for on-demand usage.

Claude Sonnet · picked by Auto
18.2k input · 1.1k output · 12.4k cached
$0.07

And a cap that really is hard

Transparent pricing only helps if you can stop the meter. Set a monthly cap at any amount, including $0 beyond your included usage. When you reach it, Flintr either falls back to fast models or pauses premium requests, whichever you choose. Alerts fire at the thresholds you pick, so the cap is rarely a surprise. Estimate your bill to see what a typical month looks like.