Billing & wallet
Prepaid wallet, pay-as-you-go usage, top-ups, and refunds.
RouteMux bills from a single prepaid wallet. You top it up once, then every request across every provider draws from the same balance — no per-provider invoices and no surprise monthly bill.
How charges work
Billing is pay-as-you-go. Each request:
- Reserves an estimate against your wallet (a hold) when it starts.
- Runs upstream and records the real usage.
- Settles the exact charge from RouteMux's own pricing engine and releases the hold.
The amount you pay is computed entirely inside RouteMux from its own price table — the upstream provider's numbers are never the source of truth for what you're billed.
Free-model usage settles at zero
Some models are offered free within a daily token allowance. Eligible free
usage still records normally and settles to a 0 charge.
Top up your wallet
Add credit from the Billing page in the console. Checkout is handled by Stripe.
- The minimum payable top-up is $3 (USD). A coupon that would push the payable amount below this line is rejected rather than silently raising the price.
- Purchased credit is refundable while unspent and does not expire.
- Promotional or bonus credit may expire and cannot be cashed out; when you request a refund, bonus credit you received earlier is clawed back.
Credit types
Your wallet can hold several kinds of credit, each tracked separately on an append-only ledger:
| Kind | Source | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Purchased | Your top-up | Refundable while unspent, never expires |
| Top-up bonus | Promotions on a top-up | May expire |
| Signup bonus | New-account grant | May expire |
| Promo / coupon | Campaigns and codes | May expire |
| Referral | Invite rewards | Released after a holding window |
| Compensation | Support / incident credit | Issued by the team |
Refunds
There are two refund paths:
- Usage refund — a specific request is reversed (for example a failed or invalid result). The credit returns to your wallet.
- Top-up refund — settled across your whole account: total paid − total credit consumed (bonus credit included, at $1 per credit) − total already refunded, returned to the payment method you topped up with, minus the refund fee.
Consumed credit isn't refunded. Bonus credit can't be cashed out and is clawed back on a top-up refund: the part you used is deducted from the refundable amount, the unused part is zeroed. Full rules and examples are in the Refund Policy.
Negative balance
A small grace floor lets in-flight requests settle without hard-failing the
instant your balance hits zero. Accounts that have never topped up have a floor
of zero; topping up unlocks the current default grace. Once you're below the
floor, new requests are rejected with
BILLING_INSUFFICIENT_CREDITS (HTTP 422) until you top up.
Set a low-balance alert in the console so you're notified before you run out — see Observability & usage.
Check your balance from code
Your balance and spend are also available with your API key, for scripts and tools that show a provider balance — see Balance & spend API.