Credit System Explained

preparAItor uses one unified credit balance for every AI action — analyzing a job, analyzing a CV, generating documents, improving your CV in the CV Maker, practicing interviews. There are no separate pools per feature: one number, one currency.

Where You See Your Balance

The app deliberately shows one thing: how many credits you have available right now. You'll find that number in three places:

• Top navigation bar — a small chip with a sparkle icon and your available balance, next to your profile menu (on mobile it's inside the menu drawer). The chip changes color as your balance runs low, and hovering it shows "X credits available".
• Dashboard — a card shows Credits Available, with any purchased credits listed and a shortcut to buy more.
• Credit Usage page — open your profile menu and choose Credit Usage. This page shows your Credit Balance card, a Credit Costs legend for every action, and your full activity history.

If something is currently processing (say, a document generation in progress), you'll see a note like "100 in pipeline" — those credits are held for the running action and return to your balance if it fails.

What Each Action Costs

You never have to memorize costs: every button that spends credits shows its price as faint "ghost text" inside the button itself — a small sparkle icon and a number next to the label. For example, the Generate button shows ✨ 100, and the job URL analysis button shows ✨ 10. The Credit Costs legend on the Credit Usage page lists them all:

A few charging details worth knowing:

• AI Improve charges when the three variants are generated — whether or not you accept one.
• Match Check, Tailor CV and Translate CV only charge when the run succeeds. A Match Check result stays saved with the job — re-opening it later is free; only re-checking after you change your CV or the job costs again.
• An interview follow-up round (another 15 exchanges targeting your weak areas) costs another 150 credits.
• Every account gets one free interview session — you pick Practice or Coaching. After that, every session costs 150 credits.

What's Free

These never touch your balance:

• Editing — fixing extracted CV or job data, and all editing in the CV Maker (sections, templates, colors, layout)
• CV PDF export — exporting your CV from the CV Maker to PDF costs nothing, and the export is always watermark-free, free plan included
• Downloading previously generated documents from your history
• Using the Application Tracker, changing settings, and sending feedback

The rule of thumb: AI work costs credits; your own work doesn't.

The Free Plan: A Tour, Not a Pool

The Free plan has no monthly credits. Instead it gives you a set of lifetime free runs — a tour of every feature, no card required: 2 complete applications (2 job analyses + 2 document generations), 2 CV uploads, 5 AI text improvements, 2 match checks, 1 CV health re-run, 1 CV tailoring or translation, and 1 interview session. Nothing resets, and nothing expires — when a run is used up, you buy a credit pack.

Finishing the tour also earns you a first-purchase bonus: the first credit pack you buy afterwards comes with 25% extra credits, at least 50, added once on top of what you buy.

One Balance, Never Expires

There is no subscription and no monthly credit pool: you buy credits once, they land on your single balance, and they stay there until you spend them. Nothing resets, nothing rolls over, nothing expires.

For scale: one complete application — job analysis (10) + CV analysis (15, first time only) + document generation (100) — costs 125 credits the first time and 110 for each one after, since your analyzed CV is reused.

Reserved Credits — and Why Failures Cost Nothing

Long-running actions don't deduct credits the moment you click. Instead:

1. Start — the credits are reserved and shown as "in pipeline". They count against your available balance so you can't spend them twice.
2. Success — the reservation becomes a real deduction.
3. Failure or timeout — the reservation is released back to your balance automatically. Stale reservations expire after about 15 minutes.

You're never charged for a failed operation. One important asymmetry: deleting a completed or in-progress generation does not refund credits — deleting is housekeeping, not cancellation.

Running Low

The app blocks any action you can't afford — there's no overdraft. A button you can't afford is disabled, with a tooltip explaining why (for example, "Not enough credits for URL analysis"). When 20% or less of your credits remain, the dashboard shows a warning with a direct Buy Additional Credits shortcut.

From there, buy a one-time credit pack — checkout takes a minute and the credits land immediately.

Credit Packages (One-Time Top-Ups)

Credit packs are one-time purchases, available to everyone:

To buy one, open the pricing page and switch to the Credit Packages tab, or use Buy Additional Credits on your dashboard. Pick a package and click Buy Now — payment runs through a standard Stripe checkout, and the credits land on your account immediately.

A few things worth knowing about purchased credits:

• They never expire — there is no reset and no deadline to use them.
• Credits buy exactly one thing: AI actions. Everything else — watermark-free CV export, Word/text/email-draft downloads, the full CV design library, cloud sync, bulk ZIP download, custom Word templates, and 300 tracker entries — is included for free on every account.
• Free runs are spent first. The app consumes your remaining lifetime free runs before it touches purchased credits, so your paid credits last longer. Your purchased balance shows separately, e.g. "+600 purchased", on the Credit Usage page.

Reading Your Usage History

The Credit Usage page keeps a full log of where your credits went:

• Filter by activity type: All, Generation, CV Analysis, Job Analysis, or Interview.
• Search by job title, company, or filename to find a specific run.
• Expand an entry to see the details — for a generation that includes the job, the CV used, language, tone, documents produced, plus Credits Used, Balance Before, and Balance After.
• Non-spending events appear too, such as Additional Credits (pack purchases) and bonus credits.
• Use Load More at the bottom to page further back.

Tips for Stretching Your Credits

• Edit instead of re-analyzing. Fixing extracted data by hand is free; re-uploading a CV costs 15 again.
• Review before you generate. Check the job details and your CV data first — a re-generation costs another 100.
• Prefer AI Improve for small fixes. At 3 credits per field, polishing a few CV bullets is far cheaper than a 60-credit Tailor run.
• Download the editable Word version and make small wording tweaks in Word or Google Docs instead of regenerating.
• Don't fear errors. Failed operations release their reserved credits automatically.

Next Steps

• Credits and billing — Payments, receipts, and your credit usage history
• Generate Application Documents — Put those credits to work