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How AI Gateway Credits Work
What uses an AI Gateway (MCP) credit, credits per plan, how to track usage, and what happens at your limit.
Intentwise AI Gateway (our MCP server) uses credits to measure usage. This article explains what uses a credit, how many credits each plan includes, how to track usage, and what happens when you reach your limit.
What is a credit?
One credit = one tool call. A tool call is a single request your AI assistant (such as Claude, ChatGPT or Copilot) sends to Intentwise AI Gateway, for example to fetch campaign performance, look up keywords, or pull product sales.
Credits are counted per tool call, not per question. Your AI assistant decides how many tool calls it needs to answer a question, so one question can use one credit or several:
| Example question | Typical tool calls |
|---|---|
| "What was my ad spend and ACOS last week?" | 1–2 |
| "Which keywords spent the most with no sales this month?" | 1–3 |
| "Compare this month vs. last month across all my brands, explain what changed, and suggest bid changes." | 5 or more |
These are estimates. The exact number depends on your AI assistant and how the question is phrased.
What does not use credits
- Connecting data sources. Adding or keeping Amazon, Walmart, DSP or other accounts connected does not use credits.
- Your AI assistant's own work. Thinking, writing, and building charts or documents inside your AI assistant do not use Intentwise credits. Only requests sent to Intentwise AI Gateway count.
- Intentwise support. When the Intentwise team works in your organization to help you, that usage is not deducted from your credits.
Monthly reset
- Credits reset on the 1st of each month. Your billing period runs from the first to the last day of the calendar month.
- Unused credits do not roll over to the next month.
Track your usage
Go to Global Settings → AI Gateway Usage in Intentwise. There you can see:
- Credit usage: credits used, your plan's total, percentage used, and credits remaining for the month.
- Billing period: the current day of the billing period and its start and end dates.
- Daily usage: a chart of credits used each day, which you can download.
- By User: how many credits each user in your organization has used.
Use the month selector to look at previous months.
Usage alerts
Intentwise sends email alerts when your organization reaches 80%, 90% and 100% of its monthly credits, so you have time to plan before you run out.
What happens when you run out
When your organization has used 100% of its credits, AI Gateway stops running tool calls for the rest of the billing period. Your AI assistant will show a message that your credit limit has been reached. Your Intentwise data, dashboards and the rest of the platform are not affected.
To keep using AI Gateway before the next reset, you can:
- Upgrade your plan to one with more monthly credits, or
- Buy additional credits for the current month.
Contact your Intentwise account team or help@intentwise.com to do either.
Tips to make your credits go further
- Be specific. Name the account, date range and metrics you want. Vague questions lead your AI assistant to make extra exploratory calls.
- Narrow multi-account questions. If you manage many accounts, ask about the accounts you need rather than "all accounts" when possible.
- Avoid re-running the same report. If you pull the same report on a schedule, consider an Intentwise dashboard, scheduled AMC query or email schedule instead of asking again each time.
- Keep related follow-ups in one conversation. Your AI assistant can reuse data it already retrieved instead of fetching it again.
- Check By User usage. If credits run low early in the month, see which users or workflows use the most.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I give credits to a specific account or user?
No. Credits are a single pool for your organization, shared by all users and connected accounts.
Do unused credits carry over?
No. Credits reset on the 1st of each month and unused credits expire.
Why did one question use several credits?
Your AI assistant may need several pieces of data to answer, such as performance, then keyword detail, then product data. Each request it sends to AI Gateway is a separate tool call and uses one credit.