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Every Lightdrift account is on a plan. The plan sets how many credits you get each month, which search features you can use, how many results a search can return, and your request limits. The Free plan includes 500 free credits every month. Manage your plan, see your credits, and upgrade in Billing. Plan prices are also listed on the pricing page.

Plans

Annual billing costs the same as 10 months: you pay for 10 months and get 12. Annual plans still receive their credits monthly. For the Custom plan, email hello@lightdrift.ai.

How credits are counted

A search uses 1 credit per 10 results, rounded up, with a minimum of 1 credit.
  • The same rule applies to text search, search by image, image plus text search, and find similar (POST /v1/similar).
  • Credits are reserved when the request starts, based on the requested k. When the search finishes, the charge is settled to the number of results actually returned. You are never charged more than was reserved.
  • Image details, metadata, and license lookups (GET /v1/asset/...) are free.
  • Failed searches are not charged.
  • Docs MCP reads public documentation and does not use credits.
Each search and find-similar response includes a credits object with what the call used and what is left:
The public GET /v1/pricing endpoint returns the current plans and credit rules as JSON.

Monthly reset

Credits reset every month on your billing date. For paid plans, that is the day your subscription started. For the Free plan, it is the day you signed up. Unused credits do not roll over to the next month.

When you run out of credits

When your monthly credits are used up, searches return 402 with "error": "credits_exhausted" until the next reset.
  • Free, Starter, and Pro: upgrade to the next plan in Billing to keep searching now, or wait for your monthly reset. The 402 response includes upgrade_url and next_plan.
  • Scale and Custom: buy credit packs in Billing. A credit pack is 10,000 credits for $40, paid once. Pack credits never expire and are used after your monthly credits run out. The 402 response includes buy_credits_url.
Search by image (image_base64 or image_url), image plus text search, and find similar (POST /v1/similar) require a paid plan. On the Free plan these requests return 403 with "error": "paid_feature", the feature that was blocked, and an upgrade_url. On the Free plan, a search with k greater than 10 is not rejected. It returns up to 10 results, and the response includes a notice:
A capped search is charged for the results it returns, so it uses 1 credit.

Playground

The dashboard playground gives every account 10 free searches per day, including search by image and find similar. Free plan users can use it to try the paid features. Playground searches do not use your monthly credits.

What each limit means

  • Requests per minute: how many authenticated requests you can make in a minute window.
  • Requests per day: how many authenticated requests you can make in a daily window.
  • Concurrent searches: how many searches can be in progress at the same time across your account. Once a search finishes, its slot becomes available again.
Minute and daily request limits use fixed windows. Requests count toward these limits even when rejected; repeatedly retrying will not bypass the limit. A request limit is not a charge: failed searches are not charged. With API keys, minute and daily counters are tracked per key. Images MCP connections authenticated through OAuth share a request counter for the account. Concurrent searches are counted across the account. Custom API-key limits may override the plan defaults.

When a request is blocked

Headers for API integrations

Use the response headers to pace REST requests. Headers available depend on the response; a concurrency rejection, for example, includes Retry-After and X-Concurrency-Limit. Credit usage is reported in the response body credits object, not in headers. API headers reflect the effective limits for a particular request, including custom key limits.