Quotes, limits and billing
What Compute charges per million input and output tokens, what a free estimate does, and how approval, usage, invoices and payment differ.
A quote tells you the proposed price and limits. It does not approve the work or confirm a payment. New paid work uses credit you purchase before execution. Check the account, work and amount before approving a job; complete any credit purchase separately in the secure human payment step.
Choose the record for your question
| Record or action | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Free estimate | An estimate for assessing fit. It does not start work, reserve your budget, or create a bill. |
| Signed quote | The proposed work, applicable price, maximum charge, and expiry. It still needs separate approval. |
| Your approval | Permission for the exact work, or a bounded policy that already covers it. Current admission checks still apply. |
| Credit purchase | Confirmed funding for the selected account, separate from approval to run work. |
| Job admission | Whether Compute accepted that submission under access, policy, spending limits and a hold on available credit. It is not a completed result. |
| Accepted usage | Work accepted under the applicable charging rules. A duplicate delivery or an unaccepted attempt is not automatically another billable unit. |
| Paid purchase invoice | The credit purchased, its service subtotal, any tax and confirmed payment. Historical invoices retain their original terms. |
| Monthly statement | The account's credit movements and accepted usage for the period. The prepaid amount due is zero. |
| Authoritative payment record | The payment state matched to the purchase or historical invoice. Instructions, a transfer attempt or an accounting label do not prove funding. |
Use the terms and maximum shown for the work you approve, rather than an old estimate or copied price. A new quote does not silently authorize a new job.
Understand the token tariff
Compute has one customer tariff: $0.05 per 1,000,000 input tokens and $0.10 per 1,000,000 output tokens (USD). There are no separate page, image, minute, or Mac-hour prices. Lithi measures text, code, documents and media in tokens. The applicable metering profile defines the counts. Another provider’s token count cannot replace Lithi’s count.
For example, 10,000,000 input tokens and 2,000,000 output tokens give an illustrative estimate of $0.70 before applicable adjustments. Normal platform retries and hedges, default verification, delivery, and platform repair are included. A customer-requested evaluation is a separate service billed in its own tokens.
Get a free estimate to review pricing information. It grants no access or execution authority. Copying the prompt does not install software, upload your work, request keys, or start a job. Preparing an application is optional, and sending one requires your explicit approval.
Buy credit without increasing your authority
Start with a paid $25 credit purchase. Later top-ups are voluntary, with no free starter grant, automatic reload, overage or debt. Purchased credit is account-specific, does not expire and cannot be withdrawn as cash or transferred to another account. Separately disclosed purchase tax does not increase spendable credit. A purchase does not raise a key or account limit or approve a job.
Lithi holds the approved maximum before dispatch. Accepted usage consumes the original hold once, and settlement releases its unused portion. A timeout or cancellation request does not prove that an in-flight hold can be released. Customer credit and provider payouts are separate.
Keep spending and payment permissions separate
The account, project or organization, acting identity, key, approval, and job may each impose a limit. A broader permission does not cancel a narrower applicable restriction. An absent or unavailable limit does not authorize spending without a confirmed boundary.
A work key does not grant billing administration or payment authority. Customer charges and Mac-provider earnings remain separate. Expected earnings do not approve customer spending, and an earnings statement is not evidence that a customer invoice was paid.
Check the current invoice
Open the purchase and billing records for the selected account. Confirm the reference, service amount, tax, currency and current payment and credit state. A paid purchase invoice records funding; a monthly prepaid statement explains its use without requesting another payment. For historical debt, follow the invoice's own amount and due date.
The authoritative payment record is the source for Compute invoice status. An external finance system's Paid label is an annotation, not a substitute for that record. Processing is not Paid. An unavailable status should remain unconfirmed rather than becoming an assumed success or zero balance.
Use the secure human payment step offered for that account, or the verified instructions for a historical invoice. Do not share payment-session links, card or bank details, credentials or verification codes in an AI prompt, clipboard handoff, terminal arguments, logs or support message.
Recover without creating another charge
If a job submission lost its response, find the existing job or request before submitting it again. If an accepted result cannot be downloaded, recover delivery or renew access rather than rerunning inference.
If a payment response is missing, preserve the original purchase or invoice reference and check its current state before paying again. Unknown credit is not zero credit. A missing purchase invoice is recovered without another charge. For a dispute, use safe references; a support acknowledgment is not a refund, confirmed funding or permission to change the agreed terms.
Review Compute invoices to locate the record for your account. Keep an unresolved payment unconfirmed until its authoritative state or reconciled payment confirmation is available.