> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.hiveintelligence.xyz/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Limits and credits

> How the anonymous lane, credits, and rate limits work, and what happens when you hit them.

Hive stops rather than billing you for overage. Plans are fixed subscriptions with a hard
cap, so a runaway agent produces an error, not an invoice.

## The anonymous lane

Without an account you get 25 material calls per IP per day, resetting at 00:00 UTC.

Discovery calls do not count, and neither does `report_feedback`. Your agent can list tools
and read schemas as often as it needs while working out what to call. Every other call is one
allowance call, taken when the request is accepted and given back if the call fails, bad
arguments included, so only calls that succeed count toward the 25. `GET /api/v1/quota` and
`hive doctor` show what is left without spending any.

## Credits

Signed-in accounts draw from a monthly credit wallet instead. Credits are tracked on your
account, not per key, so creating extra keys does not create extra allowance.

Every tool costs one credit; discovery tools, category listings and `report_feedback` cost
none. On a keyed lane the credit is debited only after your arguments validate and the
provider is reachable, so a validation error costs nothing. If the call then fails, the credit
is refunded and the receipt carries a warning saying so, which means only a call that succeeds
costs a credit. A scheduled monitor run is refunded the same way when it errors or every tool
call in it fails. Each receipt says what happened in `credit_cost`, `credits_used` and
`credits_remaining` (see [receipts](/concepts/receipts#what-the-call-cost)).

| Plan | Monthly credits | Rate limit | Active keys |
| - | - | - | - |
| Free | 10,000 | 100/min | 5 |
| Starter | 100,000 | 300/min | 5 |
| Pro | 500,000 | 500/min | 10 |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Custom |

Current pricing lives at
[hiveintelligence.xyz/pricing](https://www.hiveintelligence.xyz/pricing).

## What happens at the cap

Requests fail with a quota error naming the cause. Nothing is billed beyond your subscription,
and no request silently degrades to worse data.

The credit error tells you to upgrade or wait for the next cycle. On the MCP endpoint it also
names the exact instant your credits refill, taken from your billing cycle, and sends
`Retry-After: 60`. On the REST API the same error carries `X-Quota-Remaining` but no
`Retry-After` and no refill instant, so read your cycle end from dashboard usage instead.

Your credits reset on a rolling cycle, not on the first of the month. The cycle is anchored to
when your account was created, or to your most recent payment if you are on a paid plan. You
can see the current balance and cycle end on
[dashboard usage](https://www.hiveintelligence.xyz/dashboard/usage).

## Rate limits

Rate limits are per minute and per plan. Exceeding one returns a rate limit error with
headers telling you when to retry. Agents should back off rather than retrying immediately.

Rate limits and credits are separate: you can be well inside your monthly credits and still
hit a per minute limit during a burst.

## Designing agents around this

A few habits that keep agents inside the caps:

* Use `limit` and `page` rather than pulling full result sets you will not read.
* Cache results your workflow reuses within a single task, instead of re-fetching per step.
* Prefer a category endpoint when a workflow only touches one domain, so discovery calls stay
  cheap and focused.


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