Alva uses a credit-based billing system. Credits are dollar-backed and displayed as tokens in the interface. Every AI-powered action in Alva costs credits — conversations with Alva, background analysis, discovery searches, and BDR agent actions.
How credits work
- Your plan includes a monthly credit allocation that refreshes each billing cycle
- Credits are deducted automatically as you use AI features
- You can purchase additional credits at any time — these never expire
- Your balance is visible at Settings → Billing
What uses credits
AI conversations
Every message to Alva costs credits based on the length of the conversation. Longer conversations cost more because more context is processed, but continuing an existing conversation is cheaper than starting a new one.
Background AI processing
These run automatically and cost credits:
- Deal health scoring — periodic recalculation of every deal’s health
- Risk detection — checking for deals that need attention
- Email analysis — processing new emails for sentiment, signals, and entities
Discovery
Each company found by a discovery profile costs credits. The rate is tiered — the more companies you discover, the lower the per-company cost. See Settings → Billing for current pricing.
BDR agent actions
Most BDR actions are free, but external data lookups cost credits:
Paid actions include contact discovery queries, email lookups, and domain searches. The cost for each is shown in the agent configuration screen and on the Settings → Usage page.
Email safety checks
The AI content safety check that runs before BDR agents send emails costs a small amount of credits per check.
Monitoring your usage
Go to Settings → Usage for a detailed breakdown:
- Total spend — how much you’ve used this billing period
- Per-feature breakdown — which features are using the most credits
- Detailed usage logs — individual AI requests with cost breakdowns
- Trend over time — how your usage is growing
If your credits are running low, the first thing to check is BDR agent activity — an agent processing many companies can use credits quickly. Pause agents if needed while you top up.
