💎 New Pickaxe Credit System is Live

Releases & Features
21

That seems really high! Higher than we’re seeing on our end. I sent you a separate email to try to get to the bottom of things.

22

This change is not sustainable for me at all. I have already run out of credits within 6-7 days into my pro plan while before the credits covered the month easily for my users and I have less users than before. Unfortunately I will have to switch to custom GPTs and poe as I’ll see a $150-$200 USD additional per month maybe higher. And scaling these tools just amplifies the problem of usage.

1 Like
23

That’s a great solution! Pickaxe is awesome when you need to directly monetize your tools, but model cost can be a concern. If you’d like to continue to be able to use Pickaxe, I’d take a look at our new model cost estimates in the builder. Some models are more than a THOUSAND TIMES cheaper than others… so cost issues could be resolved quite quickly by making a switch. Let us know if we can help!

For example, with a Pro subscription you get $50/m of usage.

With OpenAI o1, that’d get you only about 200 interactions

With GPT-5, that’d get you about 5K interactions

With Gemini 2.0 Flash, that’d get you almost a MILLION uses.

24

Just sharing this $10 example for perspective. Choosing the right model can make a huge difference in how long your credits last. Some models are made for high-volume simple tasks while others handle complex reasoning and naturally use more credits per message. Pro users get 5 times this usage included at no extra cost.

Model Approx. Messages for $10 Task Type Example Use Cases
Google Gemini 2.0 Flash ~188,679 Simple & High-Volume • High-volume, simple Q&A
OpenAI GPT-5 Nano ~33,333 Simple & High-Volume • Basic customer support bots
Claude Haiku 4.5 ~4,000 Simple & High-Volume • Quick data classification
Grok ~358 Complex & High-Stakes • Balanced performance for general tasks
Gemini 2.5 Pro Preview ~191 Complex & High-Stakes • Advanced coding assistance
Claude 4 Opus ~77 Complex & High-Stakes • In-depth content creation
OpenAI o1 ~45 Complex & High-Stakes • Complex financial modeling
1 Like
25

Ya I was monetizing the tools but the new credit system is not cheaper at all. It’s substantially more expensive. I’m using Claude for all of my tools. In the last 7 days there have been 537 interactions. But over the last 30 days I’ve had 1800 usages and never came close to reaching my cap. So this change has impacted the tools I created.

26

If Claude is your preferred model, then Haiku 4.5 is the latest and most affordable option to consider. In fact, your total usage would cost less than $1, which is already well below the $50 monthly allowance included in the Pro plan. Claude Haiku 4.5 costs around $0.0025 per 100 interactions, so your 537 interactions in 7 days would come to about $0.013, and even 1,800 interactions in a month would cost roughly $0.045 if Haiku was selected properly. Choosing lighter models like Haiku instead of heavier ones such as Opus or o1 can help your credits last much longer while maintaining solid performance.

27

Thank you for this insight. I’ll switch my tools to Haiku.

28

Exactly! Now we’re forwarding the actual costs on to you, so you can actually see how much your usage costs. That might prompt a need to make a model change, but we think it’s better to be transparent, rather than hiding the costs as we were doing before.

29

Totally get it and appreciate the transparency.

30

Hello, thank you for explaining everything in the best possible way. I am a LTD user; could you tell me how much monthly credit each Tier 1, 2, and 3 is being given? Thank you!

31

You should be able to see that for your LTD in your account page here!

32

Nathaniel, thank you very much, I am Tier 3 and I have $15, I would like to know how much Tier 2 and Tier 1 ended up with, is that information secret?

33

I believe that the increased transparency of credits and the ability to calculate all tools using API pricing through this recent change represents a truly courageous improvement. I express my heartfelt gratitude for this.

3 Likes
34

So if BYOK support is going away then what do we tell existing clients? Hell, I don’t even have contact with many of them. I just build the studio and move on. What happens when all of these studios suddenly break due to this change?

35

I’d be happy to jump on a call with you to discuss this, but I’m quite confused. If you’ve built studios for clients and left them behind, did you transfer the studios to them? That’d mean they have their own Pickaxe subscription, so there shouldn’t be a problem.

On the other hand, if the studios you built are still managed by your account, are you using your API keys currently or ones provided by clients? If you’re using your own, again, no problem. If you’re using API keys provided by clients, and the studios are owned by you, then you’d have had to reach out anyway, as over time model providers update their key standards anyway.

It’d help a lot if you’d explain your situation in detail!

38

Hi @nathaniel,

I can see you changed the rules.. This is not what we paid for anymore. What happens to the ■■■■■■■ buyers?… You can’t change the product we bought… it’s not right. This is what we paid for: View plan details

Deal terms:

  • Lifetime access to Pickaxe

  • All future Gold Plan updates

  • If Plan name changes, deal will be mapped to the new Plan name with all accompanying updates

  • No codes, no stacking—just choose the plan that’s right for you

  • You must activate your license within 60 days of purchase

  • Ability to upgrade between 3 license tiers while the deal is available

  • Ability to downgrade between 3 license tiers within 60 days of purchase

  • Available for new Pickaxe users and returning ■■■■■■■ purchasers

  • Previous ■■■■■■■ customers who purchased PIckaxe can upgrade their license to increase their feature limits

  • Previous ■■■■■■■ customers will be grandfathered into any new features and feature limits

  • Monthly credit limits are based on GPT4 and subject to change based on costs of newer versions

Features included in all plans:

  • Create unlimited Pickaxes

  • Embed Pickaxes anywhere

  • Custom domain for Studios

  • Set embed usage limits

  • Branded chat icons

  • View how people use your prompt

  • 10% take rate

License Tier 3 features:

  • 1,000 monthly credits

  • 50 studios

  • 3 action(s) per tool (API integrations)

  • Bring your own OpenAI key (unlimited usage)

Is there a refund for us?

39

Hi @siderick,
The deal terms you shared include this line:
“Monthly credit limits are based on GPT4 and subject to change based on costs of newer versions.”

Because of that, I’m not seeing anything that isn’t being honored. It looks more like a misunderstanding of how AI model pricing works today. Early ChatGPT used simple message limits, but now every major model provider, including OpenAI and Gemini, charges by tokens. The new credit system follows the same standard: the more a model is used, the more it costs.

If your goal is to get the most out of your lifetime plan, I’m happy to help you optimize your usage. And if the concern is about the ethical or moral side of credits, all pricing is public and easy to cross check. OpenAI and other models charge based on API usage, and Pickaxe mirrors that same structure.

40

Hi! Great question! To follow up on Ahbi’s points above, as you can see, your plan includes “All future Gold Plan updates”.

This is an update that affect all users. You included! But never fear, this is actually a huge improvement for you. From your post, it sounds like economy and getting the most out of Pickaxe is super important to you. In that case, with the new system… you’re in luck! With a model like Gemini 2.0 Flash (as you can see here), instead of getting a paltry 1K uses, you can now get over 200 thousand uses! All without paying a cent beyond what’s included in your plan.

And, if you’re worried about BYOK, don’t be! We now allow as needed billing, only required when you go over your included limits. That’s even better than what we offered before, because you only need to pay when you exceed your included limit!

Let us know if we can provide any further explanation, and you’re welcome to reach out to your LTD provider for help if you need it!

41

I would love some help with optimising the usage on my main agent. It is costing disproportionally high regardless of what model is used.

1 Like
42

Nathaniel, please, there is a very fine line between being transparent and bullshiting, don’t do a “trump” on your clients. Many of us overnight went from zero extra a month to $200-400 extra per month. As long as pickaxe is not overcharging us on credits, that’s the new reality we need to live in. Instead of bs examples of gemini 2.0 flash, who cares, we are not using it, we need to focus on the root cause. Root cause is that we have not been optimising our agents and they are wasting tokens left right and center. We need to make advanced models cost efficient not settle for old cheap models to save costs. We need to address this together before you start losing clients like flies. I would really appreciate pickaxe guidance on what contributes to costs, how to save, dos and don’ts, etc. I would even pay a small fee for someone to optimise my agents for cost without compromising performance.

1 Like