Credits & Billing

Acervo runs on credits. You buy credits, you spend them on processing, and what you have left is visible in your workspace at all times. This section covers the credit model, the bundles you can buy, how charges apply, how billing works for personal versus team workspaces, and what happens with reprocessing.

The credit model

Charges are per page, not per document or per batch. The rate depends on which model you've selected for the run

• Standard pages · 1 credit per page. Used for typed text, printed material, legible handwriting, and most multilingual material. See §3 Uploading Documents for what Standard handles cleanly.
• Premium (difficult) pages · 5 credits per page. Used for faded or degraded handwriting, unusual or archaic scripts, low-contrast source material, and other harder cases.
• Transkribus OCR surcharge · 1 additional credit per page when enabled. The upload quote shows the Standard or Premium base charge, this surcharge, and the combined reservation before processing begins.

A 12-page PDF on Standard costs 12 credits. A single-page TIFF on Premium costs 5. The same per-page rates apply across all supported file types (JPG, TIFF, PDF). See §3 Uploading Documents for the full file-type breakdown.

You pick the model up front for the whole batch, Standard or Premium, and that rate applies to every page in the run. Acervo doesn't auto-switch mid-batch. If you started a batch on Standard and some pages came back with low confidence, you can run those pages again as a new batch on Premium (see §8 Exporting Your Results for reprocessing detail).

Delivery is included. Exports and ArchivesSpace sends never cost credits, and pricing is the same whether or not you use the integration. Credits meter processing, never delivery.

Bundles and tiers

Acervo offers four ways to buy credits

• Free trial · 25 free credits, valid for 30 days. A one-time offer for new accounts (personal or team). Optional. You can skip it and buy a bundle outright.
• Basic · 100 credits for $25.
• Standard · 500 credits for $100.
• Institution · Custom volume and pricing for institutional buyers.

Free trial credits expire after 30 days. All other credits, Basic, Standard, and Institution, do not expire.

How charges apply

Charges follow a reserve-then-deduct pattern, especially important for shared team balances

• When you start a job, the credits required are reserved against your balance up front. This prevents two concurrent jobs from accidentally overspending the same balance.
• If a job fails to complete, the reserved credits are released back to your balance.
• If a job completes successfully, the reserved credits are deducted.

This means your visible balance always reflects what's actually available to spend on new work. You won't see a job succeed and then discover you couldn't afford it. That conversation happens at the start, when reservation either works or doesn't.

Refunds. If a job fails to complete processing, the reserved credits are released automatically. No charge happens, so no refund is needed. For documents that did process to the end, we process refunds on request. Contact us if there's an issue with the output and you'd like a refund.

Personal vs. team billing

Billing is scoped to the workspace, not the user.

Personal workspaces bill against your personal payment method. You buy credits with your card; the credits sit in your personal balance; your processing draws from that balance.

Team workspaces have their own credit balance, separate from any individual member's personal balance. When a team member processes documents in the team workspace, credits come from the team's balance. Not from the member's personal balance. Who can do what is controlled by team role

• Purchase credits · Owner and Billing roles by default; can be granted to others via per-permission overrides
• Manage billing (Stripe, payment methods) · Owner and Billing roles by default
• View billing (read-only) · Owner, Admin, Billing, and Member by default

See §2 Workspaces & Teams for the full role/permissions matrix and how to assign or override permissions.

Stripe checkout

Bundle purchases go through Stripe. The checkout knows whether you're buying on behalf of yourself (personal workspace) or on behalf of the team (team workspace), and routes the charge accordingly

• Personal checkout charges your card and credits your personal balance
• Team checkout charges the team's billing account and credits the team's balance

For institution billing, contact us for pricing.

Transaction history

Every credit grant, purchase, reservation, release, and deduction is recorded in your workspace's transaction history. For personal workspaces, only you see this. For team workspaces, members with View team usage permission can see all transactions across the team. Useful for institution-wide accounting and reconciliation.

Reprocessing and credits

Reprocessing is a fresh job, and it's charged at the same per-page rates as any other job. If you reprocess 50 pages on Standard, that's 50 credits; on Premium, 250 credits.

Because Acervo deletes source documents after each run, reprocessing requires re-uploading. There's no "re-run on existing data" discount. Every processing run charges per page based on the model selected. See §8 Exporting Your Results for when reprocessing makes sense (and when it doesn't, e.g., when you just need the same batch in a different export format).

Where to go next

• §2 Workspaces & Teams · Role permissions for purchasing and managing billing
• §8 Exporting Your Results · Reprocessing flow and when it costs credits vs. when re-export is free
• §10 Privacy & Data Handling · What's retained in your workspace (jobs, transaction history) vs. what's deleted (source documents)