Credits & Pricing
How cloud credits work, what each feature costs, and how to control spend
Cloud features are priced in credits - small integers, not dollars. Local audits never cost credits.
Getting credits
| Source | Credits | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | 500/month | Every account, no card required; resets each calendar month |
| Pro plan ($19/mo) | 5,000/month | Resets each billing period; unused monthly credits expire |
| Credit top-up (min $10) | 100 per $1 | Paid plan only; pick any amount; never expire |
Monthly credits are spent before purchased top-up credits. Subscribe and top up from the Billing & Credits page in the dashboard.
Checking your balance
squirrel creditsPlan: Pro
Balance: 2340 credits (2000 monthly + 340 purchased)
monthly credits reset 2026-07-08
Pricing:
ai_parse 1 per page
site_type 5 per run
...
Top up: https://squirrelscan.com/account/credits
squirrel auth status also shows your balance, and the start banner of every audit shows the estimated spend against it.
Pricing
| Feature | Cost | Used by |
|---|---|---|
| Report publishing | 2 per report | squirrel audit --publish |
| AI page analysis | 1 per page | ai/llm-parsability, ai/page-type-match |
| Site type detection | 5 per audit | ai/site-type |
| Authority signals | 1 per page | eeat/authority-signals |
| Adblock/privacy check | 5 per audit | All three adblock rules share one check |
| Dead link checking | 1 per 100 URLs | links/dead-links |
| Browser rendering | 2 per page | Cloud rendering |
| Keyword gaps | 25 per audit | gaps/keywords (opt-in) |
| Content gaps | 25 per audit | gaps/content (opt-in) |
| Issue enrichment | 1 per issue | AI recommendations in the dashboard |
A typical 50-page audit with the default cloud rules costs around 60-110 credits depending on how many pages the per-page rules analyze.
Spend controls
Three guardrails keep an audit from spending more than you expect:
[cloud]
max_credits_per_audit = 200 # hard cap per audit; 0 = unlimited
confirm_threshold = 50 # estimates above this prompt before spending
enabled = true # master switch for all cloud features- Per-audit cap - if the estimate exceeds
max_credits_per_audit, work is truncated deterministically at the cap and remaining rules reportskippedwith reasoncredit-cap-reached. - Confirmation prompt - in a terminal, an estimate above
confirm_thresholdasks before proceeding. Use--yesto skip prompts (e.g. in CI or agent workflows). Non-interactive runs proceed without prompting, bounded by the cap. - Master switch -
enabled = falseturns off all cloud calls for the project.
See the cloud configuration reference for all options.
When credits run out
Nothing breaks. Cloud rules report skipped with reason insufficient-credits, the audit completes with all local rules, and you see a single warning with a top-up link. If a cloud service fails entirely after you were charged, the charge is automatically refunded.