Understanding Credits

Categorify uses a credit-based system to track usage. Every time you categorize a product, one credit is deducted from your account balance. This article explains how credits work, how they’re consumed, and how to manage them effectively.

What Are Credits?

Credits are the unit of measurement for Categorify usage. Think of them as categorization tokens—each time Categorify processes a product, it uses one token from your balance.

One categorization = one credit

This applies regardless of:

• Which categorization method you use (manual or automatic)
• Which settings you have enabled
• Whether a category is found or not
• How long the product description is
• What taxonomy level is returned (parent or leaf)

When Credits Are Consumed

Credits are deducted when the categorization pipeline runs successfully, even if no category is found. The system analyzed your product description and attempted to find a match—that computational work is what consumes the credit.

Credits ARE consumed when:

• Categorization returns a category (🟢 green indicator) → 1 credit
• Categorization uses a best guess (🟡 yellow indicator) → 1 credit
• Categorization returns no category (⚫ gray indicator) → 1 credit
• You re-categorize the same product manually → 1 credit (each time)

Credits are NOT consumed when:

• A technical error prevents categorization (🔴 red indicator)
• Network issues interrupt the request
• API failures occur before processing
• Queued categorizations are removed due to zero credits

Re-Categorization Costs Credits

If you manually re-categorize a product that’s already been categorized, it consumes another credit. Each categorization runs the full AI pipeline—there’s no concept of “updates” or “refreshes” that would be free.

Example: You categorize a product, verify the result, then decide to re-categorize it with different settings. That’s 2 credits total—one for each categorization attempt.

Types of Credits

Your credit balance consists of up to three types of credits, depending on your account status and subscription.

Trial Credits

When you first install Categorify, you receive 100 trial credits valid for 7 days. These credits let you test categorization on your actual products before subscribing.

Trial credits are consumed first, before any other credit type. For complete details on how the trial works, see Understanding the Trial.

Monthly Credits

When you subscribe to a paid plan, you receive a monthly credit allocation that refreshes at the start of each billing cycle:

• Starter Plan: 3,000 credits/month
• Growth Plan: 11,000 credits/month
• Scale Plan: 23,000 credits/month
• Pro Plan: 49,000 credits/month

Key characteristics:

• Renewable - Credits refresh at the start of each billing cycle
• Non-cumulative - Unused monthly credits are lost when the new cycle begins
• Plan-dependent - Different plans include different monthly allocations

Example: If you’re on the Scale plan with 23,000 monthly credits and only use 18,000 in a billing cycle, the remaining 5,000 are lost when your next cycle starts. You’ll receive a fresh 23,000 credits for the new month.

Top-up Credits

Top-up credits are additional credits you purchase separately from your subscription. They’re optional and only needed if you exhaust your monthly allocation.

Key characteristics:

• Purchased separately - Buy credits in packages at various price points
• Persistent - Remain in your balance until used—they don’t expire or reset
• Zero by default - Your top-up balance starts at zero
• Only available after subscribing - You cannot purchase top-up credits during your trial

When to buy top-up credits:

• You’ve used all monthly credits before the cycle ends
• You’re running a large import or bulk categorization
• You’re testing aggressive automatic categorization settings
• You need a buffer for unexpected usage spikes

Credit Consumption Order

When you categorize a product, Categorify consumes credits in this specific order:

1. Trial credits first (during trial period)
2. Monthly credits first (after subscribing)
3. Top-up credits last (when monthly credits are depleted)

This prioritization ensures you use your renewable monthly allocation before tapping into your persistent top-up reserve.

Example credit consumption:

Your Scale plan includes 23,000 monthly credits, and you have 5,000 top-up credits from a previous purchase.

• Categorizations 1-23,000: Uses monthly credits → Monthly: 0 remaining, Top-up: 5,000 remaining
• Categorizations 23,001-28,000: Uses top-up credits → Monthly: 0 remaining, Top-up: 0 remaining

When your next billing cycle starts, your monthly credits renew to 23,000, but your top-up balance remains at 0 (since you used them all).

Monitoring Your Credit Balance

Track your credit usage in the Usage pane on the Categorify dashboard.

What You See

The Usage pane displays:

Usage: 15,250 available

Monthly: 8,000 remaining · 15,000 / 23,000 used
65%

Top-up: 7,250 remaining (150 used this cycle)

This shows:

• Total available credits: Sum of remaining monthly + top-up credits (15,250)
• Monthly credits: How many remain out of your plan’s allocation (8,000 of 23,000)
• Monthly usage percentage: Visual indicator of cycle consumption (65%)
• Top-up credits: Persistent balance across billing cycles (7,250)
• Top-up usage this cycle: How many top-ups you’ve consumed this month (150)

Understanding Your Balance at a Glance

Use these metrics together to understand your usage patterns:

High monthly usage with low remaining credits suggests you may need:

• A plan upgrade with a higher monthly allocation
• To purchase top-up credits for the current cycle
• To review automatic categorization settings if usage is higher than expected

Consistently unused monthly credits suggests you might:

• Be on a plan that’s too large for your needs
• Be able to downgrade to a lower tier
• Have room to enable more aggressive automatic categorization

Growing top-up balance indicates:

• You’ve purchased more credits than you’re using
• You have a good buffer for unexpected usage spikes
• You may not need to purchase more top-ups for several cycles

Top-up Credit Packages

If you exhaust your monthly credits before your billing cycle ends, you can purchase additional credits in various package sizes:

Small Top-ups

1,000 credits - $7

• $0.0070 per categorization
• For occasional overages or testing new settings

3,000 credits - $19 (Save 10%)

• $0.0063 per categorization
• For moderate monthly overages

Initial Setup & Bulk Imports

10,000 credits - $58 (Save 17%)

• $0.0058 per categorization
• For large catalog imports

25,000 credits - $135 (Save 23%) - Most popular

• $0.0054 per categorization
• For comprehensive catalog setup

50,000 credits - $260 (Save 26%)

• $0.0052 per categorization
• For enterprise-scale operations

100,000 credits - $500 (Save 29%)

• $0.0050 per categorization
• For massive bulk imports or migrations

Choosing the Right Package

One-time large imports: Buy enough to cover the import plus a small buffer. The larger packages offer better per-credit pricing.

Regular monthly overages: Consider upgrading your plan instead. If you consistently need top-ups, a higher-tier plan is usually more cost-effective than repeatedly buying credits.

Occasional spikes: Smaller packages (1,000-3,000 credits) work well for unpredictable needs without over-purchasing.

Buffer for peace of mind: Purchase credits before you need them. They never expire, so having a reserve prevents interruptions during critical operations.

How to Purchase

1. Open Categorify from the Apps section
2. Navigate to Settings
3. In the Top-up Credits section, select a package size
4. Click Buy credits
5. Complete payment through Shopify

Credits are added to your balance immediately after purchase.

Note: Top-up credits are only available to users with active paid subscriptions. You cannot purchase top-ups during your trial period.

What Happens When Credits Run Out

When your credit balance reaches zero—both monthly and top-up credits exhausted—categorization stops until you take action.

Behavior with Zero Credits

What stops working:

• ❌ Manual categorization (all methods disabled)
• ❌ Automatic categorization (webhooks ignored)
• ❌ Queued categorizations (automatically removed from queue)

What continues working:

• ✅ Dashboard access
• ✅ Viewing categorization History
• ✅ Accessing Settings
• ✅ Reviewing past results

How to Continue Categorizing

When you run out of credits, you have two options:

Option 1: Purchase Top-up Credits

Buy a credit package immediately to continue categorizing. Credits are added to your balance within seconds, and categorization resumes.

Option 2: Upgrade Your Plan

Move to a higher tier with a larger monthly credit allocation. The upgrade takes effect immediately, giving you access to your new plan’s credits.

Option 3: Wait for Monthly Renewal

If your billing cycle is about to end, wait for your monthly credits to refresh. This doesn’t help with top-up exhaustion, only monthly credit depletion.

Preventing Credit Exhaustion

Monitor usage regularly: Check the Usage pane every few days if running bulk operations or aggressive automatic categorization.

Set a buffer threshold: When you reach 80% usage, decide whether to purchase top-ups or adjust categorization behavior.

Understand your patterns: Track how many credits you typically use per billing cycle. If you consistently use 90%+ of your allocation, upgrade to the next plan tier.

Disable automatic categorization temporarily: If credits are running low and the cycle doesn’t end soon, disable automatic categorization in Settings to preserve remaining credits for manual categorization of priority products.

Mid-Cycle Plan Changes

Upgrading Your Plan

If you upgrade to a higher tier mid-cycle (e.g., Starter to Growth), you receive prorated credits immediately:

Example:

• You’re on Starter (5,000 monthly credits)
• You’ve used 3,000 credits (2,000 remaining)
• You upgrade to Growth (11,000 monthly credits) with 15 days left in your cycle

Calculation:

• 15 days remaining / 30 days in cycle = 50% of cycle remaining
• Growth allocation: 11,000 credits
• Prorated credits: 11,000 × 50% = 5,500 credits

You immediately receive 5,500 credits, and your next full cycle will include the complete 11,000 credits.

Downgrading Your Plan

If you downgrade to a lower tier, the change takes effect at the end of your current billing cycle. You retain access to your current plan’s features and credits until then.

Unused credits from your current plan don’t carry over (except top-up credits, which persist regardless of plan changes).

Credits vs. Rate Limits

Credits and rate limits are different concepts:

Credits control your total volume - how many categorizations you can perform based on your subscription plan.

Rate limits control your request frequency - how many requests you can make within specific time windows to ensure service availability.

You might hit rate limits even if you have credits remaining, or exhaust credits without hitting rate limits. Both must be managed for optimal usage.

Rate limits are the same across all plans, including the trial. For most stores, you won’t encounter rate limiting during normal operations.

Next Steps

Now that you understand how credits work:

• Subscription Plans & Billing - Compare plans and choose the right monthly credit allocation
• Monitoring Usage - Track consumption patterns and optimize credit usage
• Top-up Credits - Detailed guide to purchasing and managing top-up credits
• Dashboard Overview - Learn how to read the Usage pane and other dashboard sections

Ready to optimize your credit usage? See Monitoring Usage for strategies to make the most of your monthly allocation.