Credit Top-Up Packs: Buying Credits Beyond Your Monthly Allowance

Credit top-up packs are Macha's answer to exactly that. They're one-time purchases that add credits on top of your monthly allowance, straight from the billing page. Unlike your plan credits, top-up credits never expire — they sit in a separate balance and get spent automatically only after your monthly credits run out. Shipped on May 30, 2026, they turn "we're out of credits and it's not renewal day yet" from a wall into a thirty-second checkout.

This post walks through how the packs work, what they cost per credit, when a top-up is the right call versus upgrading your plan, and the small details (separate balances, idempotent billing, plan eligibility) that make them safe to lean on.

A quick refresher: what a Macha credit is

Before the packs make sense, it's worth being precise about the unit. In Macha, credits are spent per AI action — every model response, every Studies record processed — not per ticket "deflected" or "resolved." The cost depends on the model: roughly 0.5 to 9 credits depending on which one runs, with the default GPT-5.4 Mini at 1 credit per response. So a 1,000-credit top-up is, very roughly, a thousand more default-model agent responses — or a sizable Studies run — before your meter empties.

Your plan comes with a monthly bucket that resets each billing cycle (Starter and Professional ship a fixed monthly allowance; see the pricing page for current numbers). Top-ups are a second bucket that behaves completely differently.

The three packs

There are three one-time packs, available right from the billing page:

The bigger the pack, the lower the per-credit rate — the card layout makes the savings explicit, with price, per-credit rate, and a savings badge all on a single row (and the "Most popular" ribbon now in Macha purple to line up with the plan cards above it).

Checkout runs through Chargebee one-time checkout in an in-page popup — you don't leave the dashboard, and the credits land on your account as soon as the payment clears. (An earlier cold-load bug where the very first "Buy" click could silently do nothing was fixed in early June; the popup now waits for Chargebee's script to finish loading before it opens.)

What makes top-up credits different: they don't expire (and the spend order does the work)

This is the part worth slowing down on — but it's worth being precise, because "never-expire" gets thrown around loosely.

Your monthly plan credits reset every cycle — use them or lose them. Top-up credits do not. They roll over month to month and stay on your balance until you actually spend them. There's no clock, no "use within 12 months," no forfeiture at renewal.

Is a non-expiring add-on unique to Macha? No — and we won't pretend it is. A handful of tools do offer it: Visily's top-up AI credits never expire (though they're paused if you drop back to the free plan), and Builder.io's credits don't expire either, but cap your balance at 2× your monthly amount. What's more common, though, is some form of expiry: Descript's top-ups expire 12 months after purchase, JetBrains AI top-up credits are valid for 12 months, and both HubSpot's credits and Microsoft Copilot Studio's prepaid capacity reset monthly with no rollover — buy a pack, and anything unused at the month's end is gone.

So the honest framing isn't "Macha invented non-expiring credits." It's the combination that's hard to find in one place:

• No expiry date — your top-up balance has no clock on it.
• Spent only after your monthly allowance — you never choose a bucket; Macha drains the monthly credits first, automatically, then dips into top-ups.
• No balance cap — unlike Builder.io's 2× ceiling, you can carry as large a buffer as you've bought.

That spend order is the quiet hero. A top-up is pure insurance — it does nothing until your monthly bucket is empty, then it quietly takes over. Buy a pack in a slow month and it'll still be sitting there, untouched, when your busy month arrives.

Two balances, shown separately

Because the two buckets behave differently, the billing page shows them separately. The Usage card splits your monthly plan usage — with a bar that resets each cycle — from your persistent top-up balance, plus a note reminding you that top-ups are spent after your monthly allowance.

As of June 17, that split got even clearer: when you're carrying a top-up balance, a green +N top-up chip now sits right above your monthly credit count, with a question-mark hover that explains the whole model (persistent across cycles, used automatically after the monthly allowance is spent). At a glance you can see both "how much of this month's plan is left" and "how much insurance I'm carrying."

Figure — the +N top-up chip (signature UI moment).

What happens to your balance if you cancel or downgrade

Because top-ups are a balance rather than a date-bound grant, they don't behave like monthly credits when your plan changes — but the rules are worth stating plainly, since this is the question people ask second.

• Downgrading between paid tiers (Professional → Starter): your top-up balance is untouched. It lives in a separate bucket from your plan allowance, so changing tiers doesn't reset, refund, or forfeit it. You just keep a smaller monthly allowance with the same top-up cushion behind it.
• Cancelling your subscription: top-up credits only do their job while you hold an active paid plan — that's the plan that runs your agents and draws credits down in the first place. This mirrors how the closest non-expiring competitor, Visily, handles it: credits never expire but are paused if the workspace drops off a paid plan. On Macha, a top-up isn't a standalone cash balance you can cash out — it's a credit reserve attached to an active subscription, and it isn't refunded for being unused.

The short version: non-expiring means non-expiring while you're a paying customer. A downgrade keeps your top-ups; a full cancellation parks them. For the exact contractual and refund terms — including anything specific to your account — check the billing docs and our refund policy before you cancel.

Buying in context: the deep link from Studies

The most common moment you'll actually want a top-up is right before kicking off something big — and the classic example is a Studies run that analyzes thousands of tickets at once. Studies shows you a credit estimate before you confirm, and if that estimate is bigger than your remaining balance, you'd rather top up than abandon the run.

So there's a "Need more? Buy a top-up pack" deep link sitting right next to the credits-remaining pill on the Studies Review screen. Click it and you land directly on the top-up packs section of the billing page — no hunting through settings. (The deep-link scroll was also hardened in early June so it reliably reaches the packs section after the billing data finishes loading.)

Figure — the in-page Chargebee checkout (signature UI moment).

Who can buy top-ups

The top-up section is scoped deliberately:

• Active Starter and Professional subscriptions see the packs and can buy them.
• Trial users don't see top-ups — you upgrade to a paid plan first. (A 7-day free trial, no credit card required gives you credits to evaluate with; top-ups are a feature of paid accounts.)
• Enterprise plans don't see the section either, but for the opposite reason: Enterprise gets bypassed credit checks, so there's effectively no allowance to run out of and nothing to top up.

Built to bill correctly

One quietly reassuring detail: top-up purchases are idempotent. Each purchase is recorded against the Chargebee invoice ID as a unique key, so if a payment webhook gets delivered more than once — which payment systems do, by design — your account can't be double-credited (or double-charged in effect). It's the kind of thing you never notice when it works, which is exactly the point. There's also a broader billing-resilience fix in the same family: if a renewal payment fails and a retry later succeeds, your subscription status now flips back to active automatically instead of getting stuck.

When a top-up is the right call — and when it isn't

Top-ups are a precision tool, not a default. Here's the honest read.

Reach for a top-up when:

• You hit a temporary spike — a product launch, a seasonal surge, a one-off backlog — and you only need extra headroom this month, not every month.
• You want to run a large Studies job that's bigger than your remaining balance, and you'd rather not wait for renewal.
• You want a standing buffer so a busy week never silently stalls your agents. Because top-ups never expire, a pack bought now is still there months later.

Don't reach for a top-up when you're consistently over. This is the watch-out, and the per-credit math makes it concrete. The packs run from $0.099 per credit down to $0.080 per credit as they get bigger — but a Professional plan's bundled credits work out to $0.07 per credit, which is cheaper per credit than even the largest top-up pack. (Starter sits around $0.10 per credit.) Annual billing knocks a further 20% off plan prices, and that discount applies to plan credits, not to top-ups.

The takeaway: if you're buying a top-up most months, that's a signal to upgrade your plan or switch to annual, where the same credits cost less. Top-ups are designed for the exceptional month, not the every month. Used that way, they're the cheapest insurance in your billing. Used as a substitute for the right plan tier, they're the most expensive credits you can buy.

FAQ

How do I buy a top-up pack? From the billing page in your Macha dashboard. Pick one of the three packs, and a Chargebee checkout opens in an in-page popup. Credits are added to your account once payment clears. Active Starter and Professional subscribers can buy; trial users upgrade first.

Do top-up credits expire? No date-based expiry. Unlike monthly plan credits — which reset each billing cycle — top-up credits roll over indefinitely and stay on your balance until you spend them. A few other tools also offer non-expiring add-ons (Visily, Builder.io), but most expire them within 12 months or reset them monthly (Descript, JetBrains, HubSpot, Microsoft Copilot Studio). Macha's edge is the combination: no expiry date, no balance cap, and they're spent automatically only after your monthly allowance.

What happens to my top-up balance if I downgrade or cancel? A downgrade between paid tiers (Professional → Starter) leaves your top-up balance fully intact — it's a separate bucket from your plan allowance. A top-up credit reserve is attached to an active paid subscription, though: it's what runs your agents and draws the credits down, and unused credits aren't refunded as cash. So they survive a downgrade and are parked (not deleted) if you cancel, but they only do work while you hold an active plan. See the billing docs for the exact terms.

Which credits get used first — my plan credits or my top-up? Your monthly plan allowance is always spent first. Top-up credits are only drawn down after the monthly bucket is empty, so you never have to choose a bucket.

Are top-up credits cheaper than plan credits? Not necessarily — bigger packs have a lower per-credit rate, but a Professional plan's bundled credits are still cheaper per credit than even the largest pack, and annual billing lowers plan credits further. If you need more credits every month, upgrading is the better value; top-ups are for one-off spikes. Compare on the pricing page.

Can I get a refund on unused top-up credits? Top-ups are one-time purchases of a credit balance. Because they never expire, unused credits simply carry forward — see the billing docs and our refund policy for specifics.

Can Enterprise customers buy top-ups? Enterprise plans run with bypassed credit checks, so there's no allowance to exhaust and the top-up section doesn't appear. If you're hitting limits on Starter or Professional regularly, that's usually the cue to talk to us about Enterprise.

Bottom line

Top-up packs exist so a temporary spike never becomes a service gap. They add credits on top of your monthly allowance, they're spent only after your plan credits run out, and — unlike most tools' add-ons — they never expire. For the occasional busy month or the one big analysis run, they're cheap insurance. For a persistent overage, the smarter move is the right plan tier. Either way, you're never stuck waiting for renewal day.

If you're not on Macha yet, start a 7-day free trial, no credit card required, connect your helpdesk, and see how far your first batch of credits goes — then read the billing docs for how plans, credits, and top-ups fit together.

Written by Abbas (Customer Support & AI, Macha) · Reviewed by Ankeet Guha (Co-founder & CTO) · Published 2026-06-24 · Last updated 2026-06-24.