The Psychology of AI Credits and Rollovers

Many AI companies have adopted a credit-based pricing model.

Customers purchase credits, and each AI request consumes credits based on usage.

It's a simple model, but the real challenge lies in how those credits expire.

For example, imagine a company that:

1. Gives users a small number of free credits every day. (5 credits/day)

2. Resets purchased credits on a monthly billing cycle. (100 credits/month)

Why offer daily free credits?

It's not just generosity, it's psychology.

If users exhaust all their credits, they may start exploring other AI tools, increasing the risk of churn.

Daily free credits encourage users to return regularly, explore new ideas, and continue using the platform.

Once they are engaged in a workflow, they are also more likely to purchase additional credits if needed.

But there is another side to the story.

Many users feel frustrated when their purchased credits expire before they can use them.

It creates a sense of FOMO, and sometimes they end up spending credits on tasks that provide little or no value, just to avoid "wasting" them.

Is that really a good user experience?

This is where credit rollover becomes valuable.

Instead of letting unused credits disappear, businesses can allow a configurable portion of them to roll over into the next billing cycle.

This gives customers more flexibility while still allowing companies to maintain a sustainable business model.

This is exactly how we designed Kelviq.

With Kelviq, AI companies can:

1. Configure how many unused credits can roll over to the next cycle.

2. Define rollover policies that fit their pricing strategy.

3. Notify customers before they are about to run out of credits using configurable usage thresholds.

At the end of the day, customer retention improves when people feel they are getting the maximum value from every credit they purchase, not when they are racing against an expiration date.