How API billing works
The Venice API is pay-as-you-go: every request is metered and charged against your account’s Venice credit balance (funded in USD or via staked DIEM). There is no free tier, no monthly API quota, and no login-based subscription plan for the API — access is authenticated by an API key and billed per request.The Free, Pro, and Max plans on the venice.ai consumer app (web, desktop, and mobile chat) are separate from the API. Consumer subscription limits — such as image counts, character quotas, or unlimited chat — apply only to those apps, not to API usage. API calls are always metered against your Venice credit balance regardless of your consumer plan. See Pro Users below for the one-time credit Pro subscribers receive.
Text Models
Chat Completions
Embeddings
Media Models
Image Generation
Generation
Upscaling
Editing
Editing with multiple input images: The Per Edit price includes the first input image. Models that list an Extra Input Image price charge that fee for each additional input image beyond the first. Example: editing with 3 input images on a model priced at 0.0035 extra-image fee costs 0.0035 = $0.117.
Audio
Music
For exact pricing before generation, use the Audio Quote API. Duration-based models have fixed price tiers, while per-second models charge based on output length.
Video
Video pricing varies by resolution and duration. Visit the Video Models page for exact quotes, or use the Video Quote API.
Additional Features
Web Search and Scraping
Web Scraping automatically detects up to 5 URLs per request, scrapes and converts content into structured markdown, and adds the extracted text into model context. Only successfully scraped URLs are billed.X Search enables xAI’s native search for supported Grok models (e.g.,
grok-4-20-beta). This searches both the web and X/Twitter for real-time information. Billed per search result returned by the model (e.g., if the model returns 10 search results, you are charged for 10 results at 0.10).These charges apply in addition to standard model token pricing.Payment Options
USD
Buy Venice credits with credit card. Credits never expire.
Crypto
Buy Venice credits with cryptocurrency. Same rates as USD.
Stake DIEM
Each Diem = $1/day of credits that refresh daily.
Pro Users
Pro subscribers on the venice.ai consumer app receive a one-time $10 Venice credit when upgrading to Pro. Use it to test and build small apps. Beyond this one-time credit, API usage is billed at the same pay-as-you-go rates listed above — a Pro subscription itself does not include additional API quotas such as bundled images, characters, or tokens. Some models are restricted to Pro accounts (PRO_ONLY_MODEL); calling them from an account without an active Pro subscription returns AUTHENTICATION_FAILED_INACTIVE_KEY. See Error codes.
Free tier
The Venice API does not have a free tier. Every chat, image, audio, video, and embedding call is paid through credits, DIEM, or x402/USDC. The lowest-cost text models start at 0.01 per 1M tokens.The free daily prompt allowance on venice.ai is a feature of the consumer web app, not the API. API requests always draw from your funded balance.
Using Venice keys with other providers
Venice API keys only work againsthttps://api.venice.ai/api/v1. They are not interchangeable with keys from OpenRouter, OpenAI, Anthropic, or other providers, and keys from those providers will not authenticate against Venice. To use Venice models, generate a key at venice.ai/settings/api and point your client at the Venice base URL.