If you have ever stared at a pricing page and wondered what a "credit" actually buys you, you are not alone. Most PlayHT customers ask a version of the same question in their first week: how much speech can I generate before I need to pay more? Here is exactly how credits work, how they differ across our free and paid tiers, and how to think about prepaid packs so you never get caught off guard.

What is a credit, really?

A credit is our unit of usage, roughly tied to the number of characters of text you convert into speech. Think of it the way you'd think of minutes on an old phone plan: instead of tracking minutes of talk time, we track characters of text. The exact conversion can shift slightly by feature — voice cloning, dubbing, and voice isolation may draw down credits at somewhat different rates than standard text-to-speech, since some of those work with audio rather than raw text. Rather than commit to one rigid ratio that varies by feature, think of credits like a data plan: a pool of capacity you draw from as you generate audio, with your live balance always visible on your dashboard so there's never any guesswork.

Free tier vs. paid plans: the difference that trips people up

This is the single most important distinction to understand, because it changes how you should plan your usage.

The free tier: a monthly cap that resets

Our free tier gives you a fixed number of characters you can convert each month. That allowance resets on your monthly anniversary date, whether you used all of it or none of it. Nothing carries over. If you only use half your free allowance in June, that unused half disappears when July's allowance kicks in. This makes the free tier great for trying PlayHT out or for light, occasional use, but it is not built for banking unused capacity.

Paid plans: credits that roll over

Paid plans work differently, and in a way we think is much fairer. Every billing cycle, your plan grants you a fresh batch of credits — but any credits you did not use from the previous cycle roll over and stack on top. Your balance never resets to zero as long as your subscription stays active. Subscribe to a plan with 300,000 credits a month and only use 200,000 in month one, and you start month two with 400,000 credits available, not a fresh 300,000. A quiet month is never wasted, and a busy month can draw on the buffer you built up earlier. Over a year, this rollover model smooths out the natural ebb and flow of content production — nobody creates audio at a perfectly even pace every month.

Prepaid credit packs: a top-up that never expires

Sometimes you know a one-off project — a big audiobook, a client campaign, a product launch — will burn through more credits than your plan provides that month. For situations like this, we offer prepaid credit packs. You buy a block of credits once, and it is added straight to your account balance. Unlike your plan's monthly allowance, prepaid credits carry no expiration date at all. They sit in your account and get used only after your regular plan credits are exhausted, so you are never in a rush to "use them before they vanish." This makes prepaid packs a good fit for irregular or seasonal workloads, agencies billing per-project, or anyone who would rather pay once for a spike in usage than upgrade their whole subscription tier.

A worked example: how far do credits actually go?

Numbers are easier to reason about with a concrete example. Spoken English tends to run around 800 to 1,000 characters per minute of natural-paced narration, depending on the voice and how much punctuation-driven pausing is in the script.

  • A typical blog post of around 1,200 words is roughly 7,000-8,000 characters — call it one credit-efficient script.
  • That same post, once narrated, produces somewhere around 7-9 minutes of finished audio.
  • A 100,000-credit allowance, at that rate, comfortably covers roughly 12-15 blog-post-length scripts, or somewhere around 90-120 minutes of narrated audio in a month.
  • A full audiobook chapter (around 3,000-4,000 words) runs closer to 20,000-25,000 characters, so a 100,000-credit balance could produce about four to five chapters.

These figures move around based on voice, language, and formatting, but they give you a real sense of scale: a mid-size plan is enough for a steady content calendar, a podcast intro library, or a full course's worth of narration — not just a few lines a month.

Should you upgrade your plan or buy a prepaid pack?

The two options solve different problems, and picking the right one comes down to whether your extra usage is a new normal or a temporary spike.

  • Upgrade your plan if your usage has grown in a way that looks permanent — you consistently run out of credits before the month ends, or you've added a recurring workflow like weekly video voiceovers. A higher-tier plan gives you a larger recurring allowance (which still rolls over), and often unlocks additional features and higher-quality voice models.
  • Buy a prepaid pack if the extra need is temporary or unpredictable — a single large project, a seasonal surge, or hedging against running low before your renewal date. Since prepaid credits never expire and only get used after your plan's own credits, there is no downside to buying a bit of headroom.

Many customers do a mix of both over time: a plan sized to their typical month, topped up occasionally with a pack when something bigger comes along.

Where to check your usage

You never have to guess or do the character math yourself. Your account dashboard shows your current credit balance, how many credits came from your plan versus prepaid packs, and your usage history over time. Check it periodically, especially in the week before your renewal date, so you can decide ahead of time whether a pack or an upgrade makes sense for what's coming next.

Credits are meant to be a simple, predictable way to pay for exactly the speech you generate — not a puzzle to solve. Compare allowances and rollover details on our pricing page, or create a free account to see your own usage dashboard in action before you commit to anything.