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Aether bills VM runtime and mobile devices in one unit: the credit. A credit buys workspace VM runtime — the time an agent’s machine is actively running — and device session time on cloud devices and build sandboxes. Model calls are separate: a call made on Aether inference is charged, at the provider’s list price, to your organization’s prepaid inference balance; a call made with a stored connection is recorded for usage reporting but never billed. Neither touches your credits. Aether inference is a connection every organization has, metered on that organization’s balance. An empty balance refuses model calls with 402, even when you hold another connection: nothing falls back to a stored plan or key. Manage the balance and Add funds on the Aether inference row in Settings → Connections.

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What a credit buys

Every workspace runs on one of three runtime classes. Each class has a fixed per-hour credit rate: On boat placements a workspace is metered instead: 1 credit per CPU-hour and 1 credit per GB-hour of memory while it works, and nothing while it is idle. The per-hour rates above are the reserved placements’ rates. At full burn, a boat workspace costs 12 credits per hour for Medium, 24 for Large and 48 for XL. Medium is the reference rate: 1 credit = 6 minutes of Medium VM active time (10 credits/hour). Credits are charged for active runtime only, prorated by the second. Credits also buy mobile testing device sessions, by the second at the device kind’s rate: 1 credit a minute for an Android emulator or a Gradle build sandbox, 2 for an iOS simulator or an Xcode build sandbox. See Mobile devices.

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What consumes credits

Credits are debited for workspace VM runtime and device sessions: Administrative grants and corrections appear under adjustment. Building or rebuilding a warm pool’s prewarmed environment does not spend credits, and no token-based charge is ever made against credits.
Token counts (in/out/total) are recorded per task, model, and agent and shown in the usage explorer. They never affect your credit balance; calls on Aether inference are charged in dollars to the inference balance instead.

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Balance and ledger

Your credit balance is a signed ledger. Each entry is one credit transaction: Credits added
  • subscription_grant — your monthly tier allowance, granted each billing cycle
  • credit_pack_purchase — a one-time credit pack
  • promo_grant — promotional credits
  • admin_adjustment (positive) — manual grant
Credits removed
  • vm_runtime_debit — VM active time
  • device_runtime_debit — device session time
  • expiration_debit — granted credits that reached their expiry
  • refund_reversal — reversal of a refunded purchase
  • admin_adjustment (negative) — manual correction
Historical ledgers may contain snapshot_refresh_debit entries from the retired warm-environment billing model. Aether does not create new entries of this type. When you spend, credits are drawn from your monthly plan grant first, then from credit packs, then from promotional and admin grants. The billing projection reports your credits remaining.
Prints your plan, payment state, monthly credit grant, remaining or owed credits, and cycle end when available. aether billing balance is an alias for the same summary.
Usage shows current-cycle model usage. Billing shows your remaining or owed credits.

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Running a task costs credits

Starting a task spends VM-runtime credits, so each start passes through an admission gate before the agent runs. A task start is admitted only when all of these hold:
  • Your billing state is billable (an active or in-grace plan).
  • You have at least 1 minute of spendable credit for that runtime class.
If any check fails, the task start is refused with one of:
The one-minute minimum prevents a near-zero balance from being immediately exhausted on launch. See Pricing & Tiers for runtime-class rates and credit packs.