Billing, Plans, and Credits

Plans overview

Macha offers four plans to match different usage levels. Each plan determines your limits for connectors, agents, data sources, triggers, and custom tools.

Trial

A free plan with limited access to explore the platform. Try out agents, connect a few tools, and see how Macha works for your team. No credit card required.

Starter

For individuals and small teams getting started with AI agents. Includes basic limits for connectors, agents, and data sources.

Professional

For growing teams that need more power. Includes higher limits across the board, plus access to scheduled triggers (up to 3) and custom tools (up to 5 assignment slots).

Enterprise

For organizations that need the highest limits and priority support. Includes up to 20 scheduled triggers, 20 custom tool assignment slots, and credit check bypass so your agents never stop due to usage limits.

Credits system

Understanding Credits & Choosing the Right AI Model

Macha uses a credit-based system for AI usage. Each time an agent completes a response, credits are deducted from your organization's balance.

How credits work

• Credits are deducted once per complete assistant response — not per tool call, not for every step in the agent's instructions. If an agent makes several tool calls before responding, you're only charged once for the final response.
• The credit cost depends on which AI model the agent is configured to use. More capable models cost more credits per response.
• You set the model on a per-agent basis, so a high-volume triage agent can run on a cheap model while a complex reasoning agent runs on a more capable one.

Choosing the right model for the job

You don't need to use the most powerful model for everything. Picking the right model per agent is the easiest way to control credit spend without sacrificing quality:

• GPT-5.4 Mini (1 credit/response) — fast and affordable. Great default for most Zendesk workflows: triage, drafting replies, summarizing tickets, updating fields. If you're running high-volume support automation, make this your default.
• GPT-5 (2 credits/response) — strong quality at a reasonable cost. Use this when an agent has long, complex, multi-step instructions that Mini struggles with. This is the platform default and a good balance for most agent workflows.
• GPT-5.4 (3 credits/response) — most capable model in the OpenAI family. Best for nuanced human-facing replies, conditional policy logic, and multi-step reasoning where even GPT-5 is occasionally indecisive. Recommended when reliability matters more than cost.
• Anthropic Claude / others — explore these if the OpenAI models aren't giving you the quality you need on a particular agent.

You can pick any model when configuring an agent. If you're not sure, click the "Which model should I use?" link on the configuration screen for quick guidance.

What doesn't count toward your credits

A few specific things don't draw from your plan's credit balance:

• The welcome conversation. When you finish onboarding, Macha drops you into a one-time welcome chat that introduces what it can do with your connected tools. That conversation carries a small "This chat costs no credits" badge near the model picker, and every message you send inside it is on us — we want you to see Macha working with your data before any of your plan credits get spent. Only this one conversation per organization is credit-free; every other chat draws from your balance as normal.
• The internal Macha Sidekick agent. Questions you ask Macha-the-product (from the Sidekick widget in the dashboard) don't deduct credits.
• Cancelled study runs. If you cancel a study mid-run, credits already spent on processed records stay billed, but no new ones get charged for the cancelled remainder.

Enterprise credit bypass

Organizations on the Enterprise plan bypass all credit checks. Your agents will always run regardless of credit balance, ensuring uninterrupted service.

Top-up credits

If you burn through your monthly allowance ahead of schedule — or just want a buffer for a one-off project like a large Study — you can buy a one-time top-up pack instead of upgrading your plan.

Available packs

• 1,000 credits — $99 ($0.099 per credit)
• 5,000 credits — $449 ($0.090 per credit) — most popular, ~9% saving
• 10,000 credits — $799 ($0.080 per credit) — best value, ~19% saving

How top-up credits behave

• They never expire. Unlike monthly credits, top-ups don't reset at the end of your billing cycle — they roll over until they're used.
• Monthly credits are spent first. Top-ups only kick in once your monthly allowance is exhausted, so you never have to choose which bucket to draw from.
• Both buckets are shown separately on the Usage card in Settings → Billing.
• One-time payment, no auto-renew. Top-ups are bought through Chargebee's one-time checkout in an in-page popup — no subscription change, no surprise charges next month.

Who can buy top-ups

The Top up credits section appears on the Billing page for active Starter and Professional subscriptions. Trial accounts can't buy top-ups — upgrade to a paid plan first. Enterprise plans already bypass credit checks, so top-ups aren't surfaced there.

Usage alerts

Macha sends email notifications to all organization admins when your credit usage reaches certain thresholds:

• 50% used — a heads-up that you're halfway through your credits
• 80% used — a warning that credits are running low
• 90% used — an urgent alert to top up or upgrade before agents stop working

These alerts are sent once per threshold, so you won't receive duplicate emails.

Plan limits

Each plan includes limits on the following resources:

• Connectors — the number of integrations you can connect
• Data sources — uploaded documents and connected data
• Agents — the number of agents you can create
• Scheduled triggers — cron-based automated agent runs (Trial/Starter: 0, Pro: 3, Enterprise: 20)
• Custom tool slots — tool-to-agent assignments for custom API tools (Trial/Starter: 0, Pro: 5, Enterprise: 20)
• Studies - AI Analysis — batch AI analysis over records (Trial/Starter: not available, Pro & Enterprise: included, no run-count limit beyond the 20,000-records-per-run cap)

Managing your subscription

To upgrade, downgrade, or manage your subscription, go to Settings and open the Billing section. From there you can:

• Upgrade your plan — click the upgrade button and complete checkout. The checkout opens directly within Macha (no external redirect).
• Downgrade your plan — switch to a lower plan. The change takes effect at the end of your current billing period.
• View your current plan — see your plan name, credit balance, and usage.