If your AI Credits balance is dropping faster than expected, the first thing to know is that every AI action costs exactly one credit in Upwex – there are no 2- or 3-credit actions. So a high spend means many actions, not expensive ones.

What costs a credit

The Usage History table on the AI Credits page lists every action that has consumed credits. Each row is −1 credit; there are no multi-credit deductions. The action labels you’ll see:

  • Cover Letter – generating a cover letter for a job (the Cover Letter widget on the proposal page).
  • Job Assistant – running the Job Assistant on a job-detail page (job summary, fit check, recommended approach).
  • Job Matching – Auto Bid evaluating a single job against your profile to decide whether it’s a match.
  • Auto Bid – Auto Bid actually submitting a proposal for a matched job.
  • Answer – generating answers to client screening questions on the proposal page.
  • AI Improve / AI Generate – improving an existing cover-letter template or generating a new one in the Prompts editor.
  • Test Template – testing a saved prompt against a sample job inside the Prompts editor.

Regenerating any of these results – clicking Regenerate on a cover letter, re-running Job Assistant – counts as a separate action and consumes one more credit each time.

Where to see your usage

Open account.upwex.io/credits. Four stat cards at the top summarise the team:

  • Credits Remaining (green) – what’s left in this cycle.
  • Credits Used – total spend in this cycle.
  • Total Credits – the cycle’s allowance from your plan.
  • Extra Credits (blue) – top-up reserve. Has a Top Up button for buying more.

In the corner you’ll see Resets <date> – that’s when your monthly allowance refills (your Stripe billing cycle, not the calendar month). On a 14-day trial, credits reset daily.

account.upwex.io/credits page showing four stat cards at the top – Credits Remaining 3994 (green), Credits Used 6, Total Credits 4000, Extra Credits 0 with a Top Up button – and a 'Resets May 29' label; below: Team Members table with two rows (Upwex Support 6, mrsiologic 0) and Usage History table with Date / User / Action / Credits columns showing −1 deductions for AI Improve, Job Matching, Answer, Job Assistant, Cover Letter

Why credits empty fast

Auto Bid is doing both halves of the loop

Auto Bid spends two credits per processed job in practice – one Job Matching credit when it evaluates the job, and one Auto Bid credit when it submits a proposal. So a daily cap of 50 submissions can quietly cost ~100 credits/day if the matcher is also running on lots of skipped jobs.

Tighten it: raise the Match score threshold in Auto Bid settings, narrow your search query, or lower the daily cap. The fewer jobs the matcher sees, the fewer Job Matching credits you spend.

Job Assistant on every job you open

Job Assistant runs once per job-detail page. If you open lots of jobs out of curiosity, that’s one credit each – even if you never submit a proposal.

Tighten it: filter on Upwork before opening jobs (budget, posted date, client info), so you only invoke Job Assistant on jobs you might actually bid on.

Regenerating proposals more than once

Each regeneration is another full credit. Three rerolls of a cover letter = 4 credits for one job (1 original + 3 regens).

Tighten it: accept the first generation and edit by hand for small tweaks – only regenerate when the result is genuinely off.

One team member running ahead of the rest

The credit pool is shared across the whole team – all members consume from the same Total Credits. The Team Members table on the AI Credits page shows credits used per member, so you can see who’s burning the bulk.

Coordinate: agree on a per-person budget; if one person is running heavy Auto Bid, others may want to scale back manual use, or the Owner can buy a Top Up.

Top-Up reserve (Extra Credits)

The Top Up button on the AI Credits page buys a one-time credit pack that goes into the Extra Credits bucket. Extra Credits don’t reset at renewal – they sit there until consumed. The system uses Extra Credits only when the monthly pool is empty, so a Top Up is a safe way to bridge to the next cycle without changing your plan.

When optimization isn’t enough – upgrade

Per-seat allowances (each seat on the plan adds to the team pool):

  • Lite – 100 credits / seat / month
  • Pro – 250 credits / seat / month
  • Max – 500 credits / seat / month

If you’re consistently hitting the wall even after raising thresholds and limiting Auto Bid, the spend is real – upgrading is usually cheaper per credit than topping up every month.