AI credits are what the AI features in Instant run on: the Agent, which builds and edits for you, and Studio, which creates product imagery. Both draw from one balance, so there's nothing to divide up between them.
What you get each month
Plan | Included AI credits | Roughly enough for* |
Free | 0 | Previews and manual building only |
Starter | 1,000 | ~50 Agent tasks, ~100 Studio images |
Pro | 4,000 | ~200 Agent tasks, ~400 Studio images |
Business | 10,000 | ~500 Agent tasks, ~1,000 Studio images |
*How far they go depends on what you ask for. A quick copy edit costs far less than building a full page or a batch of Studio images.
Your monthly credits refill at the start of every month. Anything left from last month doesn't roll over, but credits you've purchased stay in your balance.
If you change plan, your monthly credits change with it straight away — move to a lower tier and you get that tier's smaller monthly amount from then on. If you've already used more than the new plan includes, you'll have none left until they refill next month.
To see what you have right now, open Overview → Plan.
What uses credits
The Agent
Building a new section or page from a prompt
Bigger edits that restructure a layout
Long conversations with a lot of output
Short prompts, like tweaking a line of copy, cost much less than a full rebuild.
Studio
Creating product shots and lifestyle images
Generating variations
Studio and the Agent share the same balance, so a busy week in Studio leaves less for the Agent that month, and the other way round.
What doesn't use credits
Editing by hand in the builder
Publishing to Shopify
A/B testing, which has its own A/B test session limits
Checking your balance
Open Overview → Plan, or the credits indicator above the Studio composer. You'll see:
What's left of this month's credits, and how long until they refill — for example, resets to 4,000 in 12 days
Any credits you've bought. These don't expire, and Instant only uses them once your monthly credits run out
A Get credits button, if your account can buy more
Buying credits and cancelling
Credits you buy don't expire, so there's no rush to use them — with one exception: they're removed if your paid subscription ends. That happens when you:
Move the project to Free in Settings → Plans
Uninstall the Instant app from Shopify
Close your Shopify store, which cancels the charge on Shopify's side
Moving between paid plans doesn't affect purchased credits — going from Business down to Starter keeps your balance. It's only ending the subscription that clears them, and they don't come back if you subscribe again later, so use them up before you cancel. See Downgrade or cancel.
If you run out
When your balance reaches zero, the Agent and Studio stop until you have credits again. Everything you've already built stays exactly as it is, and your published storefront keeps working.
To carry on straight away, buy more credits from Overview → Plan if your account offers them, or move to a plan with a bigger monthly allowance — see Upgrade your plan. Otherwise your credits refill at the start of next month.
Credits are separate from your other limits
AI credits have nothing to do with:
How many pages, sections, and templates you can publish — see Plan limits reference
A/B test sessions, the visitor limit for experiments on Pro and Business
Reaching a publishing limit doesn't cost credits, and running out of credits doesn't unpublish anything.
Getting more out of your credits
Do your Studio work in one go, which also keeps the images visually consistent.
Top up before a busy period, like a campaign or a seasonal launch, rather than running dry halfway through.
Check what it earned you with Attributed revenue in Analytics, to see whether AI-built pages paid for themselves.
For more on each feature, see Build pages with AI, Edit with AI, and Studio: AI product imagery.