Introducing Credits: A Simpler, Fairer Way to Pay for Audio Analysis

We’ve rolled out one of the biggest changes to Audio Audit since launch: how you’re billed. Minutes and hours are out, and a single, flexible unit — credits — is in. It’s easier to understand, fairer on your wallet, and it quietly lays the foundation for a lot of things we’ve wanted to build for a long time. Here’s what’s changed, why it’s better for you, and where we’re taking it next.

One Unit for Everything: Credits

Until now, your plan was measured in hours of audio per month, and every report was billed the same way regardless of what it actually did. That was simple, but blunt — a quick metadata check cost you the same per minute as a full, deep analysis.

Credits fix that. Everything in Audio Audit is now measured in one unit, with a single balance and a single history you can see at a glance.

600 credits ≈ 1 hour of standard analysis. That’s the conversion to keep in your head — everything else scales from there.

The credits a report uses depend on just two things:

Episode length — longer audio takes more processing, so it costs a little more.
What’s analysed — a full analysis costs more than a lighter, metadata-only report.

Your monthly plan credits reset at the start of each billing cycle and don’t roll over, exactly as your hours did before. Nothing about how much you get for your money has changed — we’ve simply given you a clearer, more flexible way to spend it. As a rough guide:

Free — 600 credits a month (~1 hour of analysis)
Starter — 6,000 credits a month (~10 hours)
Pro — 30,000 credits a month (~50 hours)
Studio — 120,000 credits a month (~200 hours)

Actual usage varies with episode length and the checks you run, so treat those hour figures as a guide rather than a hard limit.

Pay for What You Actually Use

This is the heart of the change. Credits are priced against the real cost of the work a report does, not a flat rate per minute.

The heavy lifting in a report — transcription and noise detection — is where most of the processing time goes, so that’s where most of the cost sits.
Shared work is only ever charged once. Several checks might rely on the same transcription, but you’re billed for that transcription a single time, not once per check.
Lighter reports cost dramatically less. A metadata-only report can come in at a fraction of the price of a full analysis.
Every report is billed as at least 10 minutes of audio, even if your file is shorter. This covers the fixed cost of spinning up the processing pipeline — a one-off startup cost rather than a per-minute one.

The upshot: the more precisely a report matches what you actually need, the less it costs. And that’s exactly the direction we’re heading — more on that below.

Top-ups: A Boost Without a Bigger Plan

One of the most common frustrations with subscription tools is being pushed up to the next tier just to cover the occasional busy month. We’ve solved that with top-up bundles — one-off packs of credits you can buy at any time, on top of your monthly allowance.

Top-ups are designed to work in your favour:

They’re used last. Your monthly plan credits are always spent first, so a top-up only kicks in once you’ve had full value from what you’re already paying for.
They don’t reset. Unlike your monthly allowance, top-up credits aren’t cleared at the start of a new cycle.
They last 12 months from the day you buy them, so there’s no rush to burn through them.

They’re ideal when your usage is spiky rather than steady — a single busy project, a backlog to clear, or a month where you’ve run out before the reset but don’t want to permanently move up a plan. Buy exactly the headroom you need, and nothing you don’t.

See the Cost Before You Commit

A usage-based system is only fair if it’s transparent, so we’ve built the tools to make every credit visible:

A credit calculator on your billing page — enter an audio length to see what it’ll cost, or convert your remaining balance back into approximate hours.
A pre-flight estimate in the upload flow, so you can see roughly how many credits a report will use before you run it.
A full credit history in Settings → Billing and plans, listing every grant and every charge.
Refunds on failed reports. If something doesn’t complete, you’re not charged for it — ever.

The calculator applies exactly the same rules as the real charge, right down to the 10-minute minimum, so the estimate you see is the price you pay.

Existing Subscribers: Nothing to Do

If you’re already on a plan, you don’t need to lift a finger. Every existing subscription has been automatically mapped to the equivalent monthly credit allowance at your current price. You get the same value you had before, now measured in credits — no one is worse off, and nothing lapses.

What’s Next: The Best Part

Credits aren’t just a relabelling exercise. They’re the foundation for a set of features we’ve had on the roadmap for a long time — and now finally have the plumbing to build.

Custom reports — turn off the checks you don’t need. Soon you’ll be able to build a report from just the checks that matter to you, and pay only for those. If you only care about loudness and silences, you won’t pay for transcription you’re not using. This is the natural conclusion of usage-based pricing: your bill follows your choices.
Granular checks and custom reports via the API. We recently opened up developer API access and promised more flexible pricing so you only pay for the checks you actually use. Credits are how we deliver it — run an individual check or a bespoke report programmatically, priced by its real processing cost, and slot Audio Audit into your own workflows and automations.
Audio enhancement tools. We’re building enhancement into the platform as its own set of credit-priced tools — think loudness normalisation and noise reduction — so you can analyse and improve your audio in one place, drawing on the same balance.
New tools, one wallet. Because everything shares a single credit balance, each new capability we add just works with the credits you already have. No new plan to sign up for, no separate meter to track — one balance across analysis, enhancement, and whatever comes next.

Looking Forward

Moving to credits is about more than tidier billing. It’s about making Audio Audit fair by design — you pay for the work you ask for, you can top up without over-committing, and every charge is something you can see and estimate in advance. Just as importantly, it’s the groundwork for a more modular, build-your-own-report platform that meets you exactly where your needs are.

We’ll be rolling out custom reports, granular API pricing, and enhancement tools on top of this foundation over the coming months. As always, we’d love to hear how you’d like to see them work.

Want the full detail on how credits, plans, and top-ups work? See the Billing & Plans guide, or head to the Pricing page to explore plans and bundles. Questions or ideas? Get in touch with our support team.

Photo courtesy of Nathana Rebouças