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Credit systems let you track actions with different credit costs from a single balance pool.

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Creating a credit system

Make sure you have some metered features created before creating a credit system.
  1. Navigate to the features page, under Products.
  2. Click “Create Credit System”
  3. Add the features that can draw from this credit system.
  4. For each feature, define how many credits each unit of usage should cost (eg, 3 credits per “premium request”).
  5. Click “Create”
ExampleIf each premium_request is worth 3 credits, then using 6 premium requests will cost 18 credits.
Now you can add this credit system to a plan, such as granting 50 credits per month or charging $1 per credit.

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Tracking and limiting credit usage

When implementing a credit system into your application, you should interact with the underlying features — not the credit system itself. This means passing in the underlying feature_id when checking or tracking usage.

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Checking access

Before allowing a customer to use a feature, check if they have enough credits to do so. If each “premium request” is worth 3 credits, then this example will check if the customer has at least 18 credits remaining. 
import { Autumn } from "autumn-js";

const autumn = new Autumn({
  secretKey: process.env.AUTUMN_SECRET_KEY,
});

const { data } = await autumn.check({
  customer_id: "user_or_org_id_from_auth",
  feature_id: "premium_request",
  required_balance: 6,
});
In this case, we have a balance of 100 credits remaining, so we’re allowed to use our 6 “premium requests” feature.
If a feature is not defined in the credit system, it will returnallowed: false

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Tracking usage

Since the customer has sufficient credits, you can let them use their 6 “premium requests”. Afterwards, you can track the usage to update their balance. This will decrement the customer’s balance by 18 credits (6 requests * 3 credits per request). 
import { Autumn } from "autumn-js";

const autumn = new Autumn({
  secretKey: process.env.AUTUMN_SECRET_KEY,
});

await autumn.track({
  customer_id: "user_or_org_id_from_auth",
  feature_id: "premium_request",
  value: 6,
});
Since the customer started with a balance of 100 credits, and used 18 credits, their remaining balance is 82 credits.

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Monetary credits

You may want your credit system to represent a monetary value: eg, $10 of credits. To implement this, you can map each credit to a cent value (eg, 1 credit = 1 cent).
  1. When creating your credit system, define credit amounts in the per-cent cost
Eg: if each premium_request costs 3 cents, our credit cost should be 3.
  1. When adding the credits to a plan, set the granted amount of credits in cents
Eg, if customers get 5 USD credits for free, they should have an included usage of 500.
  1. When charging for the credits, set the cost of each credit to 1 cent
See the credits pricing guide for a more detailed example of setting up a monetary credits system

Credits Example