Pricing & credits

TokenBroker runs on two currencies moving in opposite directions: real money flowing in from people who spend, and credits flowing out to people who contribute. Both are designed to be predictable and boring in the best sense — no surprise line items, no mystery about what a credit is worth, no fine print about how a redemption actually settles. This page is the exact mechanics of both.

How you pay

TokenBroker charges per token, with per-model input and output prices. Every model in the catalog shows its own price before you use it — there are no surprise line items.

Payments are processed through Square, so you can pay with:

Two ways to use the service:

  1. Pay as you go — keep a balance in your wallet; every request deducts from it. Holds are placed and released per request, so you’re never double-charged.
  2. Plans — a subscription that includes monthly usage and predictable limits. Plans also unlock higher rate limits for active users.

Per-key daily spend caps let you (or your team) set hard ceilings so a runaway script can never drain your wallet.

Why “credits” are not cents

The compute network pays contributors in credits. A common misconception is that one credit equals one cent — it doesn’t.

Credits are the network’s internal currency. Their value depends on:

You can earn credits by contributing compute, and you can spend them on API usage. Think of it like airline miles earned from a good trip — valuable, redeemable, but not a bank balance.

Credit quality tiers

The network grades nodes on response quality, consistency, and reliability. The base earning rate is 10 credits per 1,000 real output tokens your node completes; what a credit is actually worth depends on your tier:

What a quality tier is actually worth

Tier Who gets it Value per credit Per 1,000 output tokens
Premium Well-performing, consistent nodes $0.02 $0.20
Standard Normal, reliable nodes $0.01 $0.10
Basic Lower-quality or inconsistent nodes $0.005 $0.05

Tier isn’t a one-time label — it’s derived from your node’s ongoing accepted- vs-failed ratio, latency, and gaming-penalty history, so a node that keeps producing quality responses climbs tiers over time. The dashboard shows your current tier and quality score so you always know where you stand and what it would take to move up.

Fairness & abuse controls

To keep credits meaningful:

Real work, real credits. The system is designed to reward nodes that serve real members and paying customers first.

Referrals: $5 for you, $5 for them

Every account has a personal referral code (find it on your dashboard). When someone signs up using it and proves they’re a real, active user — either by registering a worker node or by completing a real payment, whichever happens first — both of you get $5.00 credited to your wallet, once, no strings attached beyond that. There’s no cap on how many people you can refer, and the reward is idempotent on the backend, so it’s paid exactly once per referred account no matter what triggers it.

This exists for the same reason the rest of the network does: every genuinely new, independent member — someone who wasn’t going to sign up anyway — makes the network stronger for everyone already in it, not just for the person who referred them.

Refunds & disputes

Wallet credits are refundable at the operator’s discretion per the terms of service. Contact the operator through the dashboard for any billing issue.

Ads

The website is ad-supported (Google AdSense and similar providers) to keep entry costs low. Ads never appear inside API responses — only on the site itself.