Credits, Metering, and What Each Tool Costs

How metering works

StretchSEM is credit-metered. Every live tool run costs 1 credit. Reading data you've already generated is always free. This keeps costs predictable: you pay for computation (a fresh SERP fetch, a crawl analysis, a page score), never for looking at your own history.

What costs a credit

Each of these live runs costs 1 credit:

Domain report
Competitor Compare (domain vs domain)
Keyword research
SERP / keyword check
Rank tracking (one check across your keyword set)
SERP movers is derived from stored ranks and is free to read
Content brief
Keyword gap
Competitor discovery
Domain monitor snapshot
On-page analysis
Technical site audit
Backlink scan / refresh

What's free

Reading stored data never costs a credit:

Listing your reports and opening any saved report
Reading a domain's rank tracking history and SERP movers
Reading domain-monitor history
Viewing provider readiness (the Data sources panel)
Creating, editing, and deleting campaigns/projects

Automatic refund on failure

StretchSEM charges the credit up front, then refunds it automatically if the run can't complete. Common refunded cases:

A required external provider isn't connected (for example standalone keyword research returns a 503 until DataForSEO is set up).
A live SERP fetch or page fetch comes back empty or times out.
The target domain has no crawled content (a 422).

In every one of these, you get a clean error message and your balance is restored. You can safely retry.

A shared balance with StretchBAS

StretchSEM and StretchBAS draw from the same credit balance. One top-up covers both tools. In StretchSEM, credits are spent on the runs listed above. In StretchBAS, credits are spent on brand capture, content generation, refinement, audits, and consistency scoring.

The practical implication: if your balance is lower than you expect, check both products — activity in either one draws down the shared pool. You can review grants, purchases, usage, and refunds in the credit history surface (available through StretchBAS), where the shared ledger lives.

Watching your balance

The Credits card on the StretchSEM Overview shows metered credits spent for the workspace. After each run, the result card reports the credits spent and your remaining balance, so you always know where you stand.

A realistic example

A freelancer buys a credit pack. In a single afternoon she runs a Domain report (1), two content briefs (2), a keyword gap (1), and tracks ranks twice (2) — 6 credits. She also generates two blog drafts in StretchBAS (2 more from the same pool). Later she tries keyword research before DataForSEO is connected; it returns a 503 and refunds the credit, so her total spend is exactly 8 credits, not 9.

Tips

Reading is free — reopen reports and history as often as you like without cost.
Batch your keyword lists thoughtfully: one rank-tracking run covers up to 15 keywords for a single credit, so a well-built list is efficient.
If a run errors, check the message; you were almost certainly refunded, so just fix the input and retry.
Keep an eye on the balance if you use StretchBAS heavily — the two share the same pool.

FAQ

Do bigger inputs cost more? No. A run is 1 credit regardless of how many keywords or pages it involves (within each tool's built-in limits).

Was I charged for an error? Almost never — failed runs are refunded automatically. The result message will tell you what went wrong.

Can I see a full history of credit activity? Yes. The shared credit ledger — grants, purchases, usage, and refunds across StretchSEM and StretchBAS — is available through StretchBAS's credit history.