Billing & AI Credits
Understand school AI Credits, Exam Task capacity, budgets, and usage.
This page explains the school AI Credits that teachers use for school-funded AI features. For student balances, membership allowances, and student-paid activity, see Student Billing & AI Credit. For the school's real-money and student ledger, see Accounting & Billing.
AI Credits and Accounting are separate. AI Credits are the school's prepaid platform balance for AI generation and other metered platform services. Accounting records real-money student activity, school lesson balances, payments, refunds, and manual credits or debits in the school's configured currency.
What uses school AI Credits
| Activity | How it is charged |
|---|---|
| AI lesson, exercise, audio, and content generation | Section-based AI-generation usage with preflight estimates and input cache discounts, billed to the configured payer (school AI Credits or educator balance) |
| Ask AI PDF Page Recognition | 5 credits per newly recognized page; 0 credits when reusing pages already marked Saved in your school |
| AI image generation & editing | A flat rate of 10 credits per generated or edited image (covers custom course banners, AI unit covers, and lesson illustrations) |
| Exam Task generation | A shared organization-wide capacity allowance, a published per-Task licence charge, and ordinary AI-generation usage |
| AI writing, speaking, or handwriting assessment | The lesson's billing policy: school AI Credits for school-paid assessment, or the student's personal balance for student-paid assessment |
| Live session recording & storage | Metered usage for paid organizations (recording is disabled on Free plans) |
| Session transcription and post-session summaries | Usage-based school AI Credits when the relevant school feature is enabled |
| Marketplace or other platform services | The payer and coverage shown by the relevant school or Marketplace workflow |
Costs depend on what is generated or assessed. Current rates and plan coverage are published on Pricing; this page intentionally does not repeat configured amounts.
Educator Plans Overview
Locuto.PRO offers three tiers of educator plans:
- Free: Includes 5 free active student seats and regular monthly AI-credit replenishment to explore lesson generation and classroom tools.
- Solo 30: Designed for a single staff member, covering up to 30 active student seats for a flat monthly subscription fee (charged at initial purchase and at the start of each billing month). If your roster exceeds 30 students during the month, metered overage seats are calculated and billed at month end. See Pricing for current rates and overage fees.
- School: Tailored for multi-teacher academies and institutions with graduated seat bands, shared school credit pools, centralized teacher management, and flexible month-to-month or 12-month commitments.
To conserve school AI credits, Owners and Operations admins can configure the Lesson transcripts and summaries policy in School settings (setting it to Disable everywhere or configuring it on a per-class basis).
Monthly AI Credit Top-Up Rule
Active or paying schools across every plan (Free, Solo 30, and School) receive a monthly top-up replenishing their balance up to 300 AI credits on the 1st of each calendar month.
To qualify for the replenishment on the 1st of the month, a school must meet at least one of two conditions during the preceding calendar month:
- Activity rule: Finished at least 6 class lessons, with the most recent lesson conducted within the last 7 days of that month.
- Purchase rule: Purchased more than $10 in AI credits.
Newly registered schools receive their very first 300-credit grant unconditionally upon registration.
Tracking AI Credit Usage
Where you monitor AI credits depends on your role:
- School usage & pools: The school-wide AI Credits dashboard (
/platform/my-school/ai-credits) is an Owner and Operations admin area to manage organization-wide purchases, seat allocations, Exam Task capacity, and member budgets. - Teacher usage: Teachers track their personal credit usage directly inside generation dialogs (via live preflight cost estimates) and review past activity under Generation history (
/platform/billing?tab=generation) in the Billing sidebar view.
Exam Task capacity
Exam Tasks are licensed content as well as AI-generated content. A school has one pooled Exam Task allowance across its supported exam formats. Capacity is not a separate allowance for each exam.
When a teacher starts Exam Task generation, the platform checks the school's available capacity and AI Credits together. Active generation can temporarily reserve both. The Lesson Builder warns when a request would exceed the available school resources; if the request cannot be admitted, generation does not start.
The final charge follows the content that was actually produced:
- a successful generation settles the Exam Tasks that were produced;
- a partial result settles only the Tasks that were produced;
- failed or abandoned work releases unused capacity and unused reserved value.
Owners and Operations admins can review the pool and its usage in My School → AI Credits → Exam sections. The usage view separates the Exam Task licence charge from ordinary AI-generation usage so the school can reconcile both parts. Link to Pricing for the current published licence and generation rates.
Student self-study Exam Tasks do not use the school's Exam Task pool. They follow the student's personal balance and membership allowance rules described in Student Billing & AI Credit and Marketplace Self-Study.
Your school AI Credit balance
The school's current AI Credit balance is available on the AI Credits page. Teachers see the school balance only when their role and the lesson's billing policy allow school-funded usage. Teachers and Academic leads cannot see individual student balances or student lesson costs.
Owners and Operations admins can review the school's balance, purchases, usage, budgets, and Exam Task capacity. Use Accounting & Billing for the separate student and real-money ledger.
Top-Bar AI Credit Balance Pill & Payment Card Access
To keep credit tracking and replenishment accessible from anywhere in the platform, a yellow AI Credit balance pill sits permanently in the full-width top navigation bar.
The Balance Pill and Quick Actions
- Hover or keyboard focus: Hovering over or focusing on the yellow pill opens an interactive balance panel. It displays a real-time credit breakdown, your school's current spend status, a direct Buy button, and—for billing administrators (Operations admins and Owners)—a saved payment card summary with a Set up card or Replace card shortcut.
- Click: Clicking the pill opens the credit purchase modal directly, allowing staff to top up without leaving their current lesson or page.
Payment Card Management
Billing administrators can view and manage the school's saved payment card in two convenient locations:
- Profile menu: Select Profile menu → Payment card.
- Billing page: Navigate directly to
/platform/billing#payment-card.
The payment card row displays a realistic card visual showing the last four digits and expiration date, along with logos for all supported card brands: Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and UnionPay. Authorized administrators can click Set up card to link a new method or Replace card to update an expiring card.
AI Credit Budgets
Owners and Operations admins can set a weekly or monthly AI Credit budget for eligible school members from My School → AI Credits → AI credit budgets. The budget page shows the limit, period, current usage, alert setting, and reset date.
When a budget is configured, the member sees their remaining budget and usage state instead of an unrestricted school balance. The platform shows an approaching-limit warning and an exceeded state. Once the limit is reached, further school-funded AI actions for that member are refused until the period resets or an authorized administrator changes the limit. Teaching and course work continue as normal.
Budget alerts use the threshold configured by the school. For the configuration and role rules, see Per-Member AI Credit Budgets.
Buying and reviewing AI Credits
Staff Top-Up Authority: Any active staff member (Teacher, Academic lead, Operations admin, or Owner) can purchase an AI credit top-up for the school balance using their payment card directly from the lesson builder or top-up modals. Credits purchased by staff land immediately in the organization's shared credit pool, unblocking generation without delay.
Funding vs. Inspecting Financial Books: While all active staff members can fund the school's AI credit balance, viewing financial books, student ledgers, seat invoices, and school-wide payment history remains strictly restricted to Billing Administrators (Operations admins and Owners).
Credit Shortage vs. Budget Exceeded
When an AI action cannot proceed, the error message clearly distinguishes the exact reason and required remedy:
- Credit Shortage: The organization's AI credit pool is empty. Any staff member can click Top Up School Balance to replenish credits.
- Budget Exceeded: An individual teacher has reached their weekly or monthly member budget limit, even if the school has ample credits. Purchasing credits will not resolve this; an Operations admin or Owner must adjust the spend cap under AI Credit Budgets.
The AI Credit history identifies purchases, generation, assessment, Exam Task licence charges, and other automatic usage. Exam Task licence charges remain separate from ordinary AI-generation usage so the school can see both components.
Low-balance alerts
The Owner can configure a low-balance alert for the school's AI Credit pool. Owners receive the alert when the balance crosses the configured threshold. The threshold controls notification timing; it is not a price. Current rates remain on Pricing.
Referral and bonus credits
Staff referral rewards are paid into the school's shared AI Credit pool. A school bonus code also credits the shared pool rather than an individual teacher's balance. For the redemption rules, see Redeeming a bonus code and Referral Rewards.
Frequently asked questions
Can a teacher transfer school AI Credits to another teacher?
No. The school's shared balance and member budgets are managed by the school's Owners and Operations admins.
What happens when the school runs out of AI Credits?
School-funded AI actions can be refused until the school adds AI Credits, changes the applicable budget, or uses a plan allowance. Teaching, lesson access, and non-AI course work continue as normal.
Where do I find student payments and lesson balances?
Open Accounting & Billing. Student balances, payments, refunds, lesson charges, and manual ledger entries are not the same as school AI Credits.
Next steps
- AI Lesson Generation — understand generation workflows and recovery
- Exam Preparation — build and review Exam Tasks
- Accounting & Billing — manage the school's separate ledger
- Pricing — see current rates and plan coverage