How Credits Work

With Extend, your cost depends on what you run (e.g. Parse, Classify, Split, Extract, Edit Runs, Form Detection, Verify), how you run them (e.g. Performance vs. Light modes), and your plan’s credit rate (Pay as you go, Growth, or Enterprise).

Instead of fixed fees, you only pay for the specific processors you need, at the level of performance you require.

• Credits are Extend’s universal billing unit.
• Each action (parse, classify, extract, split, edit, form detection) consumes a base amount of credits per page, with optional surcharges for advanced features. Verify is the exception: it is billed a flat price per document.
• Your plan determines the cost per credit, and plans with higher volumes get cheaper per-page pricing.
• You stay in control with alerts, top-ups, and real-time dashboards.

The sections below cover pricing for each endpoint, followed by general credit docs on estimating total cost, tracking usage, and tagging runs.

Parsing

Parse is billed per page by engine. Parse also runs automatically when Extract or Split processors are used, and that parse is billed at the same rates.

Auto parsing

The Auto parse engine (parse_auto) routes work per page: simple pages are parsed with the lightweight pipeline while complex pages get performance-level treatment. Each page is billed by the complexity of work it required:

The per-tier charges are itemized on the run response in usage.breakdown, including which pages fell into each tier:

{
  "charges": [
    { "product": "parse_auto_light", "unit": "page", "quantity": 3, "credits": 1.5, "pages": [1, 2, 3] },
    { "product": "parse_auto_performance", "unit": "page", "quantity": 1, "credits": 2, "pages": [4] }
  ]
}

Agentic corrections

When enabled, agentic correction features use a vision language model (VLM) to review and correct OCR results during parsing.

Note: When enabled for a document, agentic corrections only applies/charges for pages where the agentic correction was triggered (e.g. low confidence text blocks, tables, etc.).

Priority parsing

Priority parsing guarantees faster p90+ parse results on the light parsing pipeline. Reach out to the Extend team if you need to enable this for your account.

Advanced Excel parsing

Advanced Excel parsing uses LLM-based layout detection for better table separation and header recognition in complex spreadsheets. Billed per cell rather than per page. Does not include empty cells.

Excel files parsed in basic mode, or in advanced mode with tables output as csv, are not charged.

When parsing is not charged

Parse credits apply to files that go through the page-based pipeline: PDFs, images, and document formats that Extend converts to PDF before parsing (such as DOC, DOCX, PPT, and PPTX). Some file types are parsed directly from their text content instead, and those runs are recorded at 0 credits:

• CSV, plain text, RTF, Markdown, and XML
• HTML and email (EML) files when they are parsed as-is rather than converted to PDF
• Excel files in basic parsing mode (see Advanced Excel parsing for the per-cell rate)

Extraction

Extraction is billed per page. Parsing runs automatically and is billed separately at parsing rates.

Operator-1

Most Operator-1 runs stay at 5 credits/page for extraction, including large table extractions and other long documents. Rare overages can apply when a short document requires unusually intensive work, such as interpreting a complex diagram or extracting information from a few extremely dense pages.

Operator runs are exempt from Review Agent, array-strategy, and large-schema surcharges.

Extraction Review Agent

The Review Agent automatically flags results for quality assurance and adds a more reliable confidence score.

Array strategy multiplier

Large Array Max Context does multiple passes through the entire document to maximize accuracy for complex array extraction, doubling the base extraction credit cost.

Classification

Classify has a single Standard mode and does not require parsing, so no Parse charge is added.

Classification Review Agent

The Review Agent automatically flags results for quality assurance and adds a more reliable confidence score.

Splitting

Splitting is billed per page. Parsing runs automatically and is billed separately at parsing rates.

Editing

• Edit Filling (/edit) costs 1 credit per page. If no schema is passed to Edit Filling, it runs Form Detection and both charges will apply (so 3 total credits per page). If you provide a schema, only the Edit Filling charges apply (1 credit per page).
• Form Detection (/detect_form or /form_detection_runs) costs 2 credits per page. The deprecated /edit_schemas/generate endpoint uses the same rate.

Verify

Verify is billed per document rather than per page, at the same price on every plan. The price depends on the engine set in config.engine.

General

Estimating total cost

💡 Formula: base credits per page × your plan's per-credit rate = $/page (plus any applicable surcharges)

Because Parse runs automatically before Extract and Split, the all-in cost per page is the sum of the operation and its parse. The table below gives the total at Pay as you go rates ($0.01/credit) with no surcharges enabled.

Classify doesn’t include a parse, so it stays at 0.5 credits ($0.005) per page.

Worked monthly examples at Pay as you go rates:

• 10,000 pages/month, Light Extract: 12,000 credits ≈ $120. The first 10,000 credits are free on a new account.
• 10,000 pages/month, Performance Extract: 50,000 credits ≈ $500.
• 100,000 pages/month, Light Parse for RAG: 50,000 credits ≈ $500 on Pay as you go.

Mix modes per processor: for example, Performance Parse for scanned pages that feed extraction and Light Parse for born-digital pages that only feed retrieval.

Example scenario

• Processing a 10-page document through a Splitting & Extraction workflow on Performance mode, would consume 70 credits in total, itemized as follows:

  • 20 credits for parsing (10 pages * 2 credits)
  • 20 credits for splitting (10 pages * 2 credits)
  • 30 credits for extraction (10 pages * 3 credits)

• If the same extraction run also has the Review Agent enabled, it would add 10 credits (10 pages * 1 credit), for a total of 80 credits.

• If the parsing step used the race pipeline strategy and had agentic text correction trigger on 5 pages and agentic table correction trigger on 3 pages, parsing would cost 48 credits (10 * 2 * 2 for race + 5 * 1 for text correction + 3 * 1 for table correction) instead of 20.

Previewing and inspecting costs

Extend gives you visibility into credit usage at every stage — while you’re configuring a processor, after each run completes, and across your account over time.

In the config builder (before you run)

When configuring a processor, the builder displays the per-page credit cost for your current settings — including any surcharges from features like the Review Agent or agentic corrections — so you can see exactly how each option affects pricing before you save.

On a run response (after you run)

Every run response includes a usage object so you can see exactly what drove its cost. usage.credits is the billed amount, usage.totalCredits rolls up any work this run triggered (e.g. parsing kicked off by an extract), and usage.breakdown lists each contributing run. Each breakdown entry can include a charges array that itemizes the credit usage — base processor tier, surcharges like the review agent or agentic corrections, and (for page-scoped add-ons) the exact page numbers that incurred the charge.

For the full shape, see usage on the extract run response.

In the dashboard (over time)

See credit balance and usage trends in real time.

Set low balance notifications and top-up preferences to stay ahead of usage.

Annual plan usage

If you’re on an annual plan, the Billing page shows how your usage is tracking against your plan — including usage to date, how much remains, the days left in your term, and a chart of your usage over time. Depending on your plan, usage is shown either in dollars against your annual amount, or in credits remaining against a prepaid balance.

You can also set alerts to be notified when your usage reaches a chosen percentage of your plan.

Customize your attributions

You can categorize your workflow, processor, and parser runs for better billing and usage tracking by including usage tags in your run metadata. This allows you to filter and visualize credit usage in the dashboard based on different dimensions like environment, team, or customer.

Adding usage tags

Include usage tags in your run metadata using the extend:usage_tags key with an array of string values:

{
  "extend:usage_tags": ["production", "use_case_1"]
}

Tag requirements

Allowed characters: Only alphanumeric characters (a-z, A-Z, 0-9), hyphens (-), and underscores (_)

Removed characters: All special characters and symbols are stripped out, including:

• Spaces
• Punctuation (!, @, #, $, %, ^, &, *, etc.)
• Quotes and brackets
• Any Unicode/emoji characters

Filtering in the dashboard

The credits dashboard provides multiple filters to help you analyze your usage:

• Usage Tags
• Processors
• Workflows
• API Keys
• Charge Types (Parsing, Classification, Extraction, Splitting, Editing, Agent usage)

You can combine multiple filters to create detailed views of your usage patterns.

You can also group the dashboard by Charge Type, Processor, Workflow, or API Key to see a breakdown of credit usage along that dimension.

Optimizing your credit usage

Looking for ways to improve workflow efficiency, or curious if Performance or Light mode is right for you? Book a consultation with the team here!