Beaver Credits

Most things you do in Beaver cost 1 credit. You send a message, Beaver searches your library, reads documents, searches millions of scholarly works outside your library, reasons through your question and that's 1 credit.

A few advanced actions cost a little more.

Plans and Pricing

Beaver offers three plans:

Plus Tools (included in Plus): External search, extracting from many files at once, and AI-ranking of search results.

All plans include unlimited use with your own API key. See the pricing page for the full feature comparison.

Credit Overview

Over 80% of questions will cost 1 credit. The additional credits are for extracting from many files, long conversations, and questions that take many steps.

A step is one round of Beaver working: thinking, running a search, or reading a document. Most questions take only a few.

Every cost above is per question. Nothing carries over to your next question.

What's Included in 1 Credit

When you send a message, Beaver may perform multiple actions to answer it: searching your Zotero library, reading PDFs, extracting information, searching millions of scholarly works outside your library, reasoning across sources. All of this is included. One question, one credit. On average, over 80% of questions will cost 1 credit.

External search is included as well. This covers both searching by topic and deep search, where a dedicated research agent traces citations or explores an author's full body of work.

Your Credit Limit

Beaver asks before a question becomes expensive.

Each question has a credit limit, set to 5 credits by default. If Beaver expects a question to go past that limit, it stops and asks you once:

• Continue: the question runs to the end without asking again.
• Wrap up now: Beaver skips the costly steps, answers with what it already has, and stops charging anything further. You still pay for the work already done.

If you don't answer within three minutes, Beaver wraps up, exactly as if you had declined the additional work.

You are asked at most once per question. You can change the limit in Beaver's settings, or switch the confirmation off if you'd rather never be interrupted.

When Extra Credits Apply

Extracting from many Files

Charges: The first 5 files are included. After that, each additional block of 5 files costs 1 extra credit.

When you ask Beaver to pull the same information out of several documents at once (e.g. a table of methods and sample sizes across 20 papers), it reads each file and extracts what you asked for. The first 5 files are included in your base credit. After that, each additional block of 5 files costs 1 extra credit.

Examples:

• Extract from 5 files → 0 extra credits
• Extract from 8 files → 1 extra credit for 3 additional files
• Extract from 20 files → 3 extra credits for 15 additional files
• Asks for 8 files, 5 fail → 0 extra credits for 3 successful files

Note: One "file" is one Zotero attachment or other document, currently up to 1,500 pages and 100MB in size (the limits may change). Length doesn't change the price: a 1,500-page book counts as one file, exactly like a 10-page article.

Long Conversations

Charges: 1 extra credit.

As a conversation grows very long, Beaver has to re-read everything said so far, along with every document it opened, to answer your next message. Past 150,000 tokens of context, the question costs 1 extra credit. This is charged once per question, no matter how long the conversation is. Beaver also displays a notice when a thread has grown long and suggests starting a fresh one to keep costs down.

Questions That Take Many Steps

Charges: 1 extra credit per 5 steps after the first 10 steps.

Some questions need a lot of back and forth: searching, reading, reconsidering, searching again. Each of those rounds is a step. The first 10 steps are included in your base credit; after that, each additional block of 5 steps costs 1 extra credit. Most questions finish well within 10 steps, so this rarely applies.

When You're Not Charged

• A question that fails, or that never gets a response from the model, costs nothing.
• If you stop a question while Beaver is working, you're charged for the work it already did, not for the rest.
• If your connection drops, the question is not charged at all.
• Files that fail to extract, and actions you declined, are never charged.

Credit Rollover

Unused subscription credits roll over to the next billing period, up to one month's worth. For example, if you have a Plus plan (120 credits/month) and only use 80 credits, the remaining 40 roll over. At the start of the next period you'll have 120 fresh credits + 40 rolled-over credits = 160 total.

Credits don't accumulate beyond one month. Instead, rolled-over credits that aren't used in the following period expire.

Purchased Credit Packs

You can buy additional credit packs (50 credits for $8) at any time from the Account page. Purchased credits expire one year from purchase as long as your account is active.

Deduction Order

Credits are consumed in this order:

1. Subscription credits (current month's allocation plus rolled-over credits)
2. Purchased credits (from credit packs)

Using Your Own API Key

You can use your own key to bypass Beaver's credits system and bill usage directly to your provider. You get unlimited access to Beaver. No credits required.

Optionally, you can enable "Plus Tools" with your own API key for a low credit cost, which gives you access to additional features like Discover New Research, extracting from many files at once, and AI-Ranking of Search Results.

When you use your own API key with "Plus Tools", the base cost per question drops to 0.25 credits because you pay the LLM token costs directly to your provider. Surcharges for extracting from files and deep external search still apply.

Long conversations and questions with many steps don't carry a surcharge with your own key because those costs are already reflected in your API provider's bill. Extraction and external search use Beaver's infrastructure regardless of which model runs your conversation, so those credits still apply. Deep search, which a Plus subscription covers, is charged per search here because the base cost of a question is a quarter of a subscription question's. Note that most external search is included

Plans and Credit Balances

You can check your current balance on the Account page or in Beaver's settings at any time. When your credits run out, Beaver will prompt you to upgrade your plan or purchase additional credits.