Plan credits and minimize retention
An organization uses one pooled monthly credit balance. Credits are reserved only when work can be accepted and charged once for each successfully reported billable source event.
Billable and zero-cost outcomes
Rejected, terminally failed, cancelled, or platform-failed scans cost zero. A successfully reported but incomplete scan caused by customer content or configuration can remain billable because engines ran and a report was produced.
Reversals are compensating ledger entries; historical usage is not rewritten.
Seed credit weights
| Source | Weight |
|---|---|
| Normal URL | 3 |
| Extended-wait URL | 5 |
max(10, 2 × pages) |
|
| DOCX | max(10, 2 × estimated pages) |
| HTML bundle | Size-band weight defined by the active plan configuration |
| Screenshot | +1 |
Plan allowances, concurrency, and weights are versioned configuration. Read usage and plan endpoints instead of hard-coding commercial values into enforcement logic.
The platform emits 50%, 80%, and 100% threshold events once per billing period.
429 is not always a one-second retry
A 429 can represent short rate limiting, concurrency capacity, plan quota, or insufficient credits. Read error.code and Retry-After.
If credits reset at the next billing boundary, Retry-After can be a large number of seconds. Present that value as a date or duration to people; do not display an unexplained integer.
Source retention
Prefer the shortest period that meets your operational need:
0h: delete source immediately after terminal processing;24h,7d, or30d: retain according to the selected upload/project policy;- screenshots: disabled by default and retained for 24 hours when enabled;
- native engine output: normally seven days;
- reports/findings: plan-dependent;
- audit events: one year.
Raw source, native engine output, screenshots, reports, findings, and backups have separate lifecycles. A report-retention setting does not imply long-term source retention.
Usage integration
Use usage:read for dashboards and threshold handling. Treat the ledger as immutable financial/operational evidence. Do not derive authoritative billing solely from a local count of created scans.