What happens when you run out of credits
What changes when your AI Credits are used up, and how to keep cataloguing.
Cover Recognition draws on your plan’s AI Credits, one recognition, one credit. Most collectors never reach the end, but a very large cataloguing sprint can. On a Duet or Band plan the allowance is shared across the household, so a big session by anyone on the plan draws it down for everyone.
When your credits run out, photo and image identification pauses, the app will tell you you’ve used your plan’s allowance. Everything else keeps working: you can still add records by Search or Manual Entry, which never use credits. See Adding records without a photo.
Your allowance renews every month on your billing date (on the free plan, the day of the month you joined), so if you’ve just run dry, a fresh batch is never far away. That holds on a yearly plan as well: the credits come monthly, not once a year. Need more before then? There’s no separate top-up, but upgrading to a plan with a larger monthly allowance in Preferences → Subscription gives you more from that point on. To see what’s left before a big session, check Preferences → Usage.