TL;DR: Bold BI's AI credit management system helps organizations monitor, control, and optimize their AI usage from a centralized platform. By tracking credit consumption across AI features such as the AI Assistant, dashboard summaries, and the Q&A widget, teams gain better visibility into their budgets, strengthen governance, and scale AI adoption with confidence.
Introduction
You're mid-conversation with the AI Assistant, three questions deep into understanding a revenue dip, when the responses suddenly stop coming. The culprit: your organization's AI credit balance has been exhausted, and nobody noticed until the moment the team needed AI the most.
This is one of the more common challenges with metered AI services. When the credit balance runs out, AI-powered features such as AI assistant, dashboard summaries, and Q&A widgets can’t process new requests until additional credits are purchased.
Bold BI® runs its AI capabilities on a straightforward credit-based system designed to make AI usage measurable, controllable, and scalable. This guide explains how Bold BI AI credits work, where they're consumed, how to purchase additional credits, and how to monitor usage so your organization can avoid unexpected interruptions.
Why manual AI usage tracking doesn't scale
Manually tracking AI feature usage across an organization is harder than it looks, and the problems tend to surface only after they've already cost time or money. Organizations commonly face the following challenges:
- Unpredictable costs: Without a structured consumption model, teams will run through their AI limits as fast as possible, resulting in surprise charges that will have finance teams scrambling.
- Risk of runaway consumption: Resource-intensive AI workflows, such as large dashboard summarizations or frequent assistant interactions, can consume credits quickly if usage isn't monitored.
- Limited governance and compliance tracking: Organizations that need accountability around AI adoption often require visibility into who is using AI features, how frequently the features are being used, and where credits are being consumed.
- Reactive scaling: Without historical usage data, organizations typically make purchasing decisions only after credits have already run low, creating unnecessary interruptions.
These challenges make it harder to scale AI adoption responsibly. Bold BI's AI credit system addresses this by making AI consumption visible, measurable, and easier to manage.
Understanding AI credits in Bold BI
AI credits are the units Bold BI uses to measure consumption of its AI-powered features. Every dashboard summary, natural language Q&A query, and AI Assistant interaction deducts a specific number of credits from your balance automatically.
It’s easy to manage the system once you understand how it works:
- License-level tracking: Credits belong to the Bold BI license, not to individual users, and can't be transferred or shared across separate licenses.
Example: If your sales and marketing team operate on separate Bold BI licenses, unused credits from one license cannot be moved to the other.
- Administrator-controlled access: All users can view the available AI credit balance. However, only the license owner or an authorized administrator can purchase additional credits and review the purchase history.
Example: A regular user can check the available AI credits before running a large summarization task but must contact an administrator if additional credits are required.
- Variable consumption: Credit usage scales with prompt complexity and input size.
Example: Asking "What were last month's top products?" typically consumes fewer credits than generating a comprehensive quarterly summary spanning multiple dashboards and regions.
Want to understand how AI Assistant usage affects credit consumption and billing? Read our guide: How AI Assistant Data Consumption Impacts Your Billing.
Where AI credits are typically used
Credits are drawn from the same license balance regardless of which feature triggers the action:
- Asking the AI Assistant a direct question about performance or trends.
- Generating a plain-language dashboard summary for a stakeholder review.
- Running the Q&A widget embedded in a live dashboard.
- Scheduling a recurring AI-generated summary for leadership analytics.
- Using AI Copilot to autogenerate a visualization from a prompt.
- Requesting widget insights about an individual chart or KPI.
Each of these uses a different number of credits, which is why it’s easy to misjudge how many your organization needs without checking usage regularly.
How many AI credits will you need?
AI credit consumption depends on several factors:
- Frequency of AI Assistant queries.
- Dashboard summary usage.
- Q&A widget activity.
- Dataset complexity.
- Volume and complexity of AI interactions.
In general, simpler AI interactions consume fewer credits than larger analytical workloads.
Bold BI’s AI Usage Dashboard provides historical consumption data that helps administrators estimate future usage and choose the most appropriate subscription plan.
Example
Here's what a single credit-consuming action looks like in practice:
- Scenario: A sales manager needs to understand why regional orders dropped last week, right before a leadership check-in.
- The action: Instead of digging through multiple dashboards, the manager asks the AI Assistant directly: "Why did Northeast orders drop last week?"
- What happens behind the scenes: The request automatically deducts AI credits from the license balance. Because this is a focused question, credit consumption is relatively low compared to a larger request, such as creating a full executive dashboard summary spanning multiple business units.
- The result: The manager receives an answer within seconds, while the AI credit balance updates automatically to reflect consumption.
Over time, hundreds of similar interactions can create highly variable usage patterns, which explains why two organizations with the same credit allocation may consume credits at very different rates.
AI credit plans and purchasing options
Bold BI offers flexible AI credit options to support different usage needs, from a free monthly allowance for getting started to subscription plans and add-on credits for scaling AI adoption across teams.
Free plan: 500 credits every month
Every active Bold BI license includes:
- 500 free AI credits per month.
- Automatic monthly refresh.
- No setup required.
- Immediate availability.
When you activate a paid AI credit subscription, the free monthly allocation is replaced by the subscription allocation for that billing cycle.
Note: Organizations evaluating Bold BI receive 500 free AI credits. For more information, contact the Bold BI team.
Purchasing additional AI credits
Once the free AI credit allowance runs low, Bold BI gives admins two options in Settings: subscriptions plans and add-on credits.
Subscription plans
Subscription plans deliver a fixed number of credits every month for a recurring price. The higher tiers include bonus credits.
| Plan | Monthly price | Base credits | Bonus credits | Total credits |
| Standard | $20 | 2,000 | None | 2,000 |
| Enterprise | $50 | 5,000 | 500 | 5,500 |
| Pro | $100 | 10,000 | 2,000 | 12,000 |
Subscriptions renew automatically against the card on file. To cancel recurring billing, contact Bold BI support. Your license drops back to the free plan at the end of the current billing cycle.
Add-on credits
Need additional credits before your next billing cycle? Add-on credits provide instant top-ups without changing your subscription.
Key details include:
- Pricing: 100 credits per $1. A $5 purchase adds 500 credits. A $10 purchase adds 1,000.
- No expiration: Unused add-on credits carry over indefinitely, so there's no pressure to burn them before month’s end.
- Eligibility: Only customers with an active paid AI credit subscription can purchase add-on credits. Customers on the free tier cannot buy additional credits.
Customers who purchase Bold BI through the Bank Transfer payment method are classified as Direct Transaction (DT) customers. For active DT customers, subscription plan and add-on credit purchases follow a request-based process.
After a purchase request is submitted through the credit portal, the request is displayed as Pending. The Bold BI Support team contacts the customer to complete the purchase process and approve the request. Credits are added to the license wallet after the request is processed.
Free plan vs. paid plan
Here are the differences between the free and paid credit plans:
| Feature | Free plan | Paid plans |
| Monthly credits | 500 | 2,000–12,000, depending on your tier. |
| Bonus credits | No | Available with the Enterprise and Pro AI credit plans. |
| Add-on credits | No | Yes. $1/100 credits. |
| Monthly cost | Free | $20–$100/month |
| Best for | Occasional AI usage. | Frequent AI usage across teams. |
The gap between "fine for now" and "constantly running dry" usually comes down to one thing: how often your team reaches for the AI Assistant.
AI governance and usage control
As AI adoption expands, visibility becomes increasingly important. Bold BI's AI credit management capabilities help organizations:
- Monitor AI consumption across users and teams.
- Identify unusual usage patterns.
- Improve budget planning.
- Support cost-control initiatives.
- Track AI adoption trends.
- Make informed credit-purchasing decisions.
By centralizing consumption data, administrators can scale AI initiatives while maintaining appropriate oversight and control.
AI credits for embedded deployments
Embedded Bold BI deployments follow the same AI credit allocation model as cloud and on-premises deployments. AI credits are allocated according to your licensed plan and are not provisioned as separate tenant-specific credit pools.
How to use AI credits in Bold BI
In Bold BI, administrators purchase AI credits through the AI and Billing settings in Bold BI. Whenever an AI feature is used, the operation’s credit cost is deducted from the balance automatically.
How to purchase AI credits
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Sign in to Bold BI as an administrator.
- Go to Settings > AI > Credits.
- Click Buy AI Credits and then sign in to the AI credits portal using the account associated with the license.
- In the AI credits purchase portal, click the settings icon in the left navigation pane, open Billing and Subscription, and then select the required subscription plan.
- Complete the payment and confirm the purchase. Upon successful payment, the purchased credits are added directly to the license’s AI credit balance. This usually takes only a few minutes.
The AI credits purchase flow in Bold BI
Tracking usage before it becomes a problem
Effective AI credit management means keeping an eye on consumption patterns over time. The Bold BI AI Usage Dashboard provides administrators with a centralized view of AI activity across their organization.
Using the dashboard, administrators can:
- Filter usage by user.
- Filter usage by site.
- Analyze usage based on custom date ranges.
- View total credits consumed.
- Identify top AI users.
- Review consumption trends.
- Monitor adoption levels across teams.
These insights make it easier to forecast future requirements and ensure credits are being used effectively.
Organizations with multiple Bold BI licenses can switch between licenses from the AI credits purchase portal, and the AI Usage Dashboard automatically updates to show usage for the selected license.
Common issues and how to resolve them
- Credits not reflecting after a successful purchase: Give it a few minutes for processing, and then refresh the AI Usage Dashboard. If the credits still haven’t shown up, contact Bold BI Support with your receipt, transaction reference, and license ID.
- AI features unavailable because the AI credit balance ran out: An admin can purchase add-on credits or upgrade the subscription plan from Site Settings > AI > Buy AI Credits. Regular users without purchase permissions should loop in their admin rather than wait it out.
- Payment failed with no retry option: Contact Bold BI Support directly with your license ID, transaction reference, and any payment details shown in the portal.
Who benefits most from Bold BI’s AI credit management feature
Bold BI’s AI credit management is designed to support a wide range of analytics and business professionals:
1. License owners and admins
Those ultimately responsible for the credit balance. With a clear grasp of how credits work, admins can:
- Monitor balances proactively instead of reacting to complaints.
- Time subscription upgrades to make the most of the free credits already in the wallet.
- Approve add-on purchases before a shortfall interrupts a team mid-project.
2. Teams running frequent AI Assistant or Q&A sessions
Heavy, recurring usage is where the free tier runs out fastest. Understanding consumption patterns empowers these teams to:
- Budget for a subscription tier that matches usage, instead of guessing.
- Compare add-on costs against a subscription tier to see which works out cheaper long-term.
- Keep AI features running without interruption during active work.
3. Organizations rolling out dashboard summarization at scale
Large, data-heavy summaries consume more credits per action than simple queries. Teams scaling this feature can:
- Plan credit needs before a large rollout, rather than reacting once usage climbs.
- Use the AI Usage Dashboard's per-user breakdown to spot outlier consumption early.
- Plan Enterprise-tier or Pro-tier bonus credits into the rollout budget from day one.
Final thoughts
Manually tracking AI usage works fine until a team leans on it daily, then it quickly becomes hard to predict, and features can stop working without warning.
The AI credit management features in Bold BI® solve this by giving administrators a clear, centralized view of consumption. As AI adoption grows across teams, staying ahead of usage becomes essential to keeping features running smoothly and scaling with confidence.
For more details, explore the AI credit documentation or request a personalized demo to see how you can manage AI usage in Bold BI more effectively across your organization.
Related resources
Want to learn more about Bold BI's AI capabilities?
- Explore the AI Assistant for natural language analytics.
- Learn how dashboard summaries automatically generate insights.
- Discover how the Q&A widget enables conversational data exploration.
Frequently asked questions
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How are AI credits managed in Bold BI?
AI credits are managed through centralized system that tracks AI usage, providing visibility into consumption and supporting organizational governance. AI credits are managed through centralized system that tracks AI usage, providing visibility into consumption and supporting organizational governance. -
Who can purchase and manage AI credits?
AI credits are managed at the license level. The license owner and authorized administrators can purchase AI credits, manage AI credit subscriptions, and monitor credit usage. Users can view the available AI credit balance. -
What happens when an AI credit balance is exhausted?
AI-powered features become unavailable until additional credits are added through a subscription plan or add-on purchase. -
What happens if AI credits run out during active use?
When the available balance is exhausted, no new AI requests are processed until credits are replenished. Organizations should monitor usage regularly to avoid interruptions. -
How are AI credits consumed?
Credit consumption depends on the feature being used, the complexity of the request, the size of the input, and the processing requirements involved.
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Are AI credits shared across licenses?
No. Credits are associated with a specific Bold BI license and cannot be transferred or shared between licenses. However, administrators managing multiple licenses can view usage for each license separately through the AI Usage Dashboard. -
How can I estimate how many AI credits my team will need?
Review factors such as user count, AI Assistant activity, dashboard summaries, and Q&A usage. The AI Usage Dashboard provides historical consumption data that can help forecast future requirements. -
Do unused subscription credits roll over?
No. Subscription credits are allocated monthly based on your plan and expire at the end of the billing cycle if unused. Add-on credits work differently: they carry over indefinitely with no expiration. The free 500-credit monthly allowance resets at the start of each new cycle. -
Can I cancel or downgrade my AI credit subscription?
Yes. To cancel recurring billing or stop future charges, contact Bold BI Support. Your subscription remains active until the end of the current billing cycle, after which your license reverts to the free AI credit plan. Plan upgrades and downgrades are not currently supported. To switch plans, you must cancel your current subscription and then subscribe to the desired plan. -
Do embedded or tenant deployments use the same AI credit system?
Yes. The AI credit system is the same across cloud, on-premises, and embedded deployments. AI credits are allocated based on your licensed AI credit subscription and are consumed when users use AI-powered features. Embedded deployments do not have separate tenant-specific credit allocations.
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Are AI credits refundable?
AI credit purchases and subscription adjustments are subject to Bold BI's applicable billing policies. Contact Bold BI Support for account-specific guidance. -
Do trial licenses receive free AI credits?
Yes. Trial licenses receive 500 free AI credits.
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