Alibaba Cloud Model Studio:Usage and quota

Token Plan Credits billing rules, deduction order, reset rules, quota exhaustion, and usage troubleshooting.

Credentials and billing boundary

Token Plan dedicated API keys start with sk-sp- and deduct only from Token Plan quotas and usage packs. Model Studio API keys (starting with sk-) use pay-as-you-go billing for model calls. Free quota, resource plans, savings plans, and account balance are part of the Model Studio pay-as-you-go system and are independent of Token Plan quota.

Deduction order

1. The plan quota for the current subscription month is deducted first; for Team Edition, this is the monthly quota of the current seat.
2. After the plan quota is used up, Personal Edition automatically deducts from usage packs; Team Edition deducts from the shared usage pack. When multiple shared usage packs are held, the one expiring soonest is deducted first.
3. After all available quota is used up, calls that consume Credits are blocked and are not automatically converted to pay-as-you-go billing. You can wait for the next subscription month to reset, upgrade the plan or seat, or purchase a usage pack or shared usage pack.

Quota rules

Reset and carryover

• Quota resets automatically per subscription month. At the start of each subscription month, the quota is restored to the full monthly quota of the corresponding tier. The reset time depends on the subscription date, not the first day of each month.
• Unused quota within a subscription month does not carry over to the next cycle.

Upgrade quota calculation

Upgrading a plan or seat does not reset the current subscription cycle: you pay the prorated price difference for the remaining days of the current subscription cycle, the current cycle only receives additional Credits prorated based on the quota difference, and the new tier's monthly quota applies from the next subscription month.

Credits granted upon upgrade (including seat upgrades) are not the full monthly quota of the new tier. They are prorated based on the price difference actually paid and the actual remaining validity period of the current subscription cycle, using the following formulas.

Upgrade price difference = (New tier price − Old tier price) × Remaining days ÷ 30
(Less than one day counts as one day)

Additional quota for the current cycle after upgrade = Remaining days ÷ 30 × (Monthly quota after upgrade − Monthly quota before upgrade)
(Less than one day counts as one day; the result is rounded up)

The actual price difference is subject to the price breakdown shown on the payment page. Team Edition upgrades are performed by seat; the actual price difference and available quota are subject to the console.

For example, on September 2, you subscribe to Personal Edition Lite (USD 6/month, 20,000 Credits per month) and upgrade to Essential (USD 10/month, 45,000 Credits per month) on September 12, with 20 days remaining in the current subscription cycle: the price difference is (10 − 6) × 20 ÷ 30 ≈ USD 2.67, and the additional quota for the current cycle is 20 ÷ 30 × (45,000 − 20,000) ≈ 16,667 Credits (rounded up).

Renewal and add-ons

• Renewal only extends the subscription validity period and does not add quota to the current subscription cycle.
• The cost and Credits for adding seats are prorated based on the remaining duration and expire together with the existing subscription.

Credits consumption rules

Credits are the unified unit of measurement for Token Plan and are not equal to tokens.

Different models have different unit prices. The Credits for a single request are determined by input tokens, cached tokens, and output tokens. Using Team Edition qwen3.6-plus as an example:

Token type	Quantity	Credits consumed
Input tokens	8,349	1.67
Cached tokens	40,794	0.82
Output tokens	573	0.69
Total	—	Approx. 3.18 Credits

Main factors that affect consumption per request:

• Model unit price: A higher-priced model consumes more Credits for the same number of tokens.
• Context length: A longer message history increases input tokens.
• Thinking mode: Enabling thinking increases output tokens.
• Tool calls: Built-in tools, MCP tools, and subtasks invoked through the model API increase the number of model calls and consume Credits.
• Cache hits: Tokens that hit the cache usually have a lower unit price than regular input tokens.

Reduce Credits consumption

Credits consumption is mainly affected by context length, model unit price, thinking mode, tool calls, and task type.

Conversations and context

• Compress message history or start a new conversation to avoid long context accumulation.
• Turn off thinking mode for simple tasks to reduce output tokens.

Models and tools

• Use a lightweight model for non-complex tasks, for example, use qwen3.8-flash instead of qwen3.8-max.
• Reduce unnecessary tool calls, MCP calls, and multi-agent parallelism.
• Use caching for repeated content; tokens that hit the cache have a lower unit price than regular input tokens.

Video and other multimodal

A single call to a multimodal model such as a video generation model consumes more Credits than a text conversation, and consumption increases with duration and resolution. Asynchronous tasks are settled together after completion, so submitting many tasks at once may quickly reach the quota limit. For first use, start with a shorter duration and a lower resolution.

Night discount

Personal Edition and Team Edition offer Credits discounts for some models between 22:00 and 08:00 (UTC+8). For the specific models, discounts, and promotion validity period, see Personal Edition supported models and Team Edition supported models.

Usage monitoring

Regularly check console Usage Analysis to identify high-consumption models and members.

Quota exhaustion and recovery

After the plan quota and usage packs (including Team Edition shared usage packs) are both exhausted, model calls that consume Credits are blocked and are not automatically billed pay-as-you-go. Recovery options:

• Wait for reset: The plan quota is automatically restored at the start of the next subscription month.
• Upgrade the plan or seat: Additional quota is prorated based on the remaining days. For details, see Upgrade quota calculation.
• Purchase a usage pack or shared usage pack: For Personal Edition usage packs, see Personal Edition · Plans and pricing. For Team Edition shared usage packs, see Team Edition · Shared usage pack.

Usage troubleshooting

For the differences between quota exhaustion, rate limiting, concurrency limits, and authentication errors, see Integration errors and rate limiting.

If consumption is faster than expected, check the context length, thinking mode, model unit price, tool calls, and asynchronous task settlement. For details, see How many Credits does a call consume and Reduce Credits consumption.

Third-party tool statistics mismatch

Token usage shown by third-party tools (such as Claude Code) may be lower than the Model Studio console. Common causes:

• Different measurement scope: Third-party tools show only model input and output tokens, while the console counts the full set of consumption items.
• Hidden consumption: System prompts, tool definitions (schemas), project conventions, multi-turn conversation history, tool call parameters and results, and model reasoning content all count toward Credits but are not shown in the tool.
• Different model unit prices: A higher-priced model consumes more Credits for the same number of tokens.

Pay-as-you-go charges

Common causes:

• Calls before activation: Calls made before Token Plan was activated are billed independently and cannot be offset by the plan.
• Configuration errors: Not using the Token Plan dedicated API key (starting with sk-sp-) and Base URL, for example, mistakenly using the general Model Studio endpoint dashscope-intl.aliyuncs.com or a Coding Plan key.

Pay-as-you-go charges already incurred cannot be offset by Credits or refunded afterward. Check the API key and Base URL immediately to ensure that subsequent calls are deducted correctly.

Usage is 0

• No actual consumption has occurred yet.
• A non-Token Plan dedicated API key is used.

If usage is 0 but calls are still being made, check whether a Model Studio API key was mistakenly used in the tool and pay-as-you-go billing was generated.