Credits

Details on Warp credits and how they are calculated.

What are Warp credits?

Any interaction with Warp's Agent consumes credits. Credits are primarily based on AI usage — the number of credits a task consumes varies based on the size and complexity of your codebase, the size of the task, the model you're using, the amount of context the agent needs to gather, and more.

Credits also include a small hosting fee, charged only when running agents in the cloud, hosted on Warp's infrastructure. For details on cloud agent credits, see Cloud Agent Credits.

Each interaction consumes at least one credit, though more complex interactions may use multiple credits. Because of factors such as codebase size, model choice, number of tool calls, and the nature of LLMs, credit usage is non-deterministic — two similar prompts can still use a different number of credits.

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For a general breakdown of what factors contribute to how many credits are consumed, please refer to: How are Warp credits calculated?

Since there's no exact formula for predicting usage, we recommend building an intuitive understanding by experimenting with different prompts, models, and tracking how many credits they consume.

Tracking your credit usage

In an Agent conversation, a turn represents a single exchange (a response from the LLM). To see how many credits a turn consumed, hover over the credit count chip at the bottom of the Agent's response:

The conversation usage footer shows how many credits a conversation has consumed, and breaks down the usage by credits, tool calls, context window, files changed, diffs applied, and more.
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You can view your total credit usage, along with other billing details, in Settings > Billing and usage.

Credit limits and billing

  • Seat-level allocation: on team plans, credit limits apply per seat — each team member has their own allowance.

  • Hitting the credit limits: Once you hit your monthly credit limit, your access will depend on your plan. On the Free plan, AI access stops until your next billing cycle. On paid plans with Add-on credits, you can continue using AI with usage-based billing, charged per extra credit.

Other features that use credits

In addition to direct Agent conversations, the following features also consume credits:

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How are Warp credits calculated?

A credit in Warp is a unit of work representing the total processing required to complete an interaction with an AI Agent. It is not the same as "one user message" — instead, it scales with the number of tokens processed during the interaction.

In short: the more tokens used, the more credits consumed.

Several factors influence how many credits are counted for a single interaction:

1. The LLM model used

Generally, smaller, faster models typically consume fewer credits than larger, reasoning-based models.

For example, Claude Opus 4.1 tends to consume the most tokens and credits in Warp, followed by Claude Sonnet 4.5, GPT-5, Gemini 2.5 Pro, and others in roughly that order. This generally correlates with model pricing as well.

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Tip: If your task doesn't require deep reasoning, planning, or multi-step problem solving, choose a more lightweight model to reduce credit usage.

2. Tool calls triggered by the Agent

Warp's Agents make a variety of tool calls, including:

  • Searching for files (grep)

  • Retrieving and reading files

  • Making and applying code diffs

  • Gathering web or documentation context

  • Running other utilities

Some prompts require only a couple of tool calls, while others may trigger many — especially if the Agent needs to explore your development environment, navigate a large codebase, or apply complex changes. More tool calls = more credits.

3. Task complexity and number of steps

Some tasks are straightforward and may require only a single quick response, without much thinking or reasoning. Others can involve multiple stages—such as planning, generating intermediate outputs, verifying results, applying changes, and self-correcting—each of which can add to the credits count.

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Tip: Keep tasks that you give to the Agent well-scoped, work incrementally, and break large changes into smaller, contained steps.

4. Amount of context passed to the model

Prompts that include large amounts of context (such as attached blocksarrow-up-right, long user query messages, etc.) or file attachments like imagesarrow-up-right may also increase the number of credits used due to increased token consumption.

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Tip: When sharing logs, code, or other large pieces of content, attach only the most relevant portions instead of full outputs.

5. Prompt caching (hits and misses)

Many model prompts include repeated content, like system instructions:

  • Cache hits: if the model provider can match a prefix or a part of the prompt from a past request, it can reuse results from the cache, reducing both tokens consumed and latency.

  • Cache misses: if no match is found, the full prompt may be processed again, which can increase credit consumption.

Because cache results depend on model provider behavior and timing, two similar prompts may still have different credit counts, depending on when you run the commands.

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Tip: Work in a continuous session when possible to improve cache hit rates.

These are the most common factors affecting credit usage, though there are others. Understanding them can help you manage your credits more efficiently and get the most from your plan.

Cloud Agent Credits

Cloud Agent Credits are a type of credit consumed only by cloud agent runs — AI requests that run on Warp-hosted compute.

Eligible for Cloud Agent Credits

The following scenarios use Cloud Agent Credits:

  • First-party integrations — Running agents through Slack or Linear integrations

  • Cloud agent runs — Using warp agent run-ambient via the CLI

  • Agent API — Running agents through Warp's Agent API

  • Cloud Mode — Running an agent from Cloud Mode in the Warp app

Not eligible for Cloud Agent Credits

The following scenarios do not use Cloud Agent Credits:

  • Local agent runs — Using warp agent run on your local machine

  • Self-hosted compute — Using warp agent run on GitHub Actions, CI/CD pipelines, or other self-hosted infrastructure

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