Top-Up Credits
Top-Up lets you buy credits upfront, in one payment, and spend them whenever you like. They are yours until you use them: they survive your monthly renewal instead of expiring with your plan credits.
This is the alternative to Pay-As-You-Go. PAYG charges your card automatically every time your usage crosses $100, which works but produces a stream of small invoices someone has to reconcile. A top-up is one purchase, one invoice, one charge.
You can use both, one, or neither. They are independent settings.
Two things to know before you buy. Your balance holds the money you paid, not a fixed number of credits. The credit figure you see is that money converted at your current plan rate, so it changes when you change plan. The dollars never move. A frozen balance is forfeited after six months. If your subscription lapses, your balance is held for six months and then permanently lost. Both are explained in full below.
Where credits come from
After Top-Up, a credit in your balance comes from one of three places, and the differences between them matter.
| Source | How it arrives | At renewal | If your subscription lapses |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plan credits | Granted monthly by your plan | Wiped and re-granted | Stop being granted |
| Top-up credits | Bought upfront by you | Survive untouched | Frozen for 6 months, then forfeited |
| PAYG | Borrowed against your card | Usage counter resets | Unavailable |
How they are spent
Every generation drains the three sources in a fixed order.
| Order | Source | Why here |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Plan credits | Use them or lose them. They are wiped at renewal whether or not you spent them |
| 2 | Top-up credits | Already paid for, and they carry across cycles, so there is no cost to spending them later |
| 3 | PAYG | Charges your card, so it goes last, and only if PAYG is on and inside its cap |
A single video can draw from all three. Each portion is recorded separately in your ledger, so you can always see what came from where. See Credits & Billing.
This order works in your favour and you do not have to manage it. Plan credits go first because they are the only ones with a deadline. Your top-up balance is never touched while you still have plan credits to burn.
Top-up spend does not count toward your PAYG monthly spend cap. That cap governs how much VidRush is willing to charge your card, and top-up money is already collected. Spending a top-up balance will not pause your generation when you hit the cap.
Buying a top-up
- Open Settings in the left sidebar, then Billing & Subscription.
- Find the Top-Up card, between Pay-As-You-Go and your Credit History.
- Enter an amount between 10,000.
- Check the credit figure and the rate shown, then continue to Stripe Checkout.
- Complete payment. You return to Billing with the new balance already visible.
Only the account owner can buy a top-up. Team members on your workspace cannot, even if they can otherwise manage billing. See Workspaces & Team Management.
The $100 floor is deliberate. Below that, card fees take too large a share of the payment, and it brings back the invoice clutter Top-Up exists to remove.
If you are planning to upgrade, upgrade first. Credits are priced at whatever plan you are on when you pay, and higher plans have a lower per-credit rate. Upgrading before you buy gets you more credits for the same money. Buying first and upgrading afterwards does not, because your dollars re-convert but the extra credits you would have got are never backdated.
What you pay
Credits are priced at your current plan rate, locked in at checkout.
| Plan | Price per credit |
|---|---|
| Enterprise | $0.0333 |
| Studio | $0.0333 |
| Scale | $0.035 |
| Pro | $0.040 |
| Creator | $0.050 |
| Starter | $0.060 |
The rate and the credit figure are both shown before you pay, so you know exactly what you are getting.
Your balance holds money, not credits
This is the part worth understanding, because it is what protects your purchase when you change plans.
What VidRush stores is the dollar value you paid. The credit figure you see is that money converted at your current plan rate, rounded down for display. Change plan and the figure re-converts, but the dollars never move.
| What happens | Balance | Credits shown |
|---|---|---|
| You buy $100 on Studio | $100.00 | 3,004 |
| You spend 1,502 credits | $50.00 | 1,502 |
| You downgrade to Starter | $50.00, unchanged | 833 |
| You upgrade back to Studio | $50.00, unchanged | 1,502 |
Downgrading makes your credit number fall. Nothing has been taken from you: the same $50.00 simply buys fewer credits at Starter’s higher per-credit price. Upgrade again and the figure comes straight back. When you confirm a plan change with a balance, both figures, both rates, and the unchanged dollar value are shown to you at that moment. See Updating Your Plan.
What happens to a balance over time
Your top-up balance is either spendable or frozen, and what decides it is whether you currently have access to the product.
| Your subscription | Can you buy? | Can you spend? |
|---|---|---|
| Active or trialing | Yes | Yes |
| Cancelled, still inside the paid period | Yes | Yes, you paid through the end of the period |
| Payment collection paused | Yes | Yes. Pausing stops new charges, and this money is already in |
| Cancelled, period elapsed | No | Frozen |
| Past due, unpaid, or no subscription | No | Frozen |
| Any state with an unpaid invoice | No | Blocked, on every source |
| PAYG switched off | Yes | Yes |
Renewal does not touch it. Your plan credits are wiped and re-granted every month. Your top-up balance sits there untouched.
A lapse freezes it, it does not destroy it. Come back within six months and the full unused balance is restored, with no penalty for the gap. The clock starts when your access actually ended, not when it was recorded, so a card that failed on the 1st and was noticed on the 3rd counts from the 1st. Resubscribe on the final day and you keep everything.
After six months it is forfeited, permanently. This is the one way to lose money you have already paid. There is no recovery path once the deadline passes, and support cannot reinstate a forfeited balance. If you are cancelling or letting a subscription lapse with a balance still on it, note the date you lose access, because that is when the six-month clock starts. The amount, the freeze date, and the deadline are all written to your Credit History.
An unpaid invoice blocks spending, including your top-up balance. This is the hardest edge in the design and it is intentional, because the rule is the same for every credit source. Settle the invoice and access is restored with nothing lost. See Failed Payments & Account Recovery.
Enabling PAYG does not unlock a frozen balance. Only having product access again does.
Refunds
A top-up purchase is not refundable.
The exception is a problem on our side: a failed render, a bug that burned credits, or a charge that should not have happened. Those are handled case by case by support. See Refund Policy.
Coming soon
- 🔜 Refund tooling. Support can already resolve product-issue cases, but the in-product side is still being built.
- 🔜 Auto-renew. Top up automatically when your balance runs low, on a threshold and an amount you set.
Good to know
- Top-Up and PAYG are not alternatives you have to choose between. Run both if you like. Your top-up balance is spent before your card is ever charged, so having both means the card is only touched once the prepaid money is gone.
- You can spend a balance to zero with PAYG switched off. Top-Up does not require PAYG and does not enable it.
- Every portion of every spend is in your Credit History. A single video that drew on plan credits, then top-up, then PAYG shows three lines, not one. See Credits & Billing.
- Buying a top-up does not change your plan or your rate. It buys credits at the rate you have today. If you are about to upgrade, upgrading first gets you a better rate on the same money.
- A paused subscription still lets you spend. Pausing collection stops new charges. It does not lock money you have already handed over.