How do Base44 credits work?

Message credits are what you spend when the AI builds or edits your app. The key thing to understand is that they are metered by the work done, not the length of your message. As a rough guide, a simple change is about 0.5 credit, a small feature is about 1 credit, and a bigger multi-file change is 2 to 4 credits. That means a well-scoped request is cheap, and you are not penalized for writing a clear, detailed prompt.

Integration credits are separate and cover the built-in services your app uses: sending email, generating images, and making LLM calls through Base44's bundled AI. Each plan includes a pool of these. The free plan gives 100 integration credits, and paid tiers scale up to thousands, so ordinary usage rarely runs into the limit while you are building and testing.

One useful way to save integration credits: if you connect your own external API keys for a service, those calls do not draw from your Base44 integration credit pool. For anyone who already has API keys for the models or services they want, this can meaningfully extend a lower plan.

To make credits go further, build incrementally. Ask for one focused feature at a time instead of one giant prompt, review the result, then continue. This keeps each change small and cheap, gives you cleaner output, and makes it easy to see exactly where your credits are going.

Credits reset on your monthly cycle and there are no standalone top-ups, so if you consistently run out you upgrade to the next plan. The simplest way to learn your real usage is to build on the free plan for a week and watch how many credits a typical session actually consumes.