How credits work
Everything you generate in Butter Motion is paid for in credits. Every plan, Free included, gives you a monthly pool of them, and each generation spends a few. This page covers what costs credits, what's always free, and how your balance gets drawn down.
What a generation costs
The price of a generation depends on one thing only: the quality tier you pick in the composer. Nothing else adds to it, not length, resolution, aspect ratio, transparency, or 3D. The tier is the whole price.
| Quality tier | Credits per generation |
|---|---|
| Flash | 7 |
| Ultra | 10 |
| Animation | 15 |
Ultra plans carefully and suits most scenes, including complex and 3D ones. Flash is the quickest and cheapest. Animation draws a whole illustrated scene in a style you pick.
3D doesn't cost extra. The 3D toggle keeps the same tier price, so you pay for the tier whether the scene is 2D or 3D.
What's free
- Previewing a generation on the result screen.
- Re-rendering the same result again (for example, to a different output folder).
- Exporting and inserting a clip to the timeline.
- The first edit of every generation on Pro and Studio. Each generation comes with one free edit, and from the second edit onward it's 5 credits. On Free there is no free edit: every edit costs 5 credits, the first one included.
- Customization controls (colors, text, numbers and fonts you change by hand). They come with every generation, are open on every plan including Free, and are free every time.
So on Pro and Studio a typical flow costs just the price of the one generation: you generate, preview, make one edit, tweak a few controls, and render. On Free the same flow costs the generation plus 5 credits for the edit.
Want to try a few different wordings? On Pro and Studio the first edit is free, and on Free an edit costs 5 credits, while generating from scratch charges the full tier price again. Editing what you already have is usually the cheaper path.
Two kinds of credits
Your balance is made of two pools, and they behave differently.
- Plan credits arrive with your plan each month, on Free too. They expire at the end of the billing period, roughly a month after they land. Unused plan credits don't roll over.
- Top-up credits come from top-up packs you buy separately. They never expire and stay in your balance until you spend them.
When you generate, Butter Motion always spends your plan credits first and saves the permanent top-up credits for last. Within each pool, the oldest credits go first. That way your expiring credits get used before they lapse.
The balance in the panel updates by itself
You don't need to restart Premiere or click anything to see new credits. When a top-up lands, a plan renews, or a refund comes through, the server tells the plugin right away and the balance in the panel header changes within a few seconds.
When plan credits expire
Each monthly grant lives for the billing cycle. On Free that's 50 credits a month. If you don't spend it, it lapses at the end of the period and a "Plan credits expired" line appears in your credit history. Next month's grant then lands fresh.
On an annual plan you don't get all 12 months of credits at once. They drip in monthly, one twelfth of the yearly total at a time, and each monthly portion expires the same way. Your credit history shows these as "Monthly credits N/12."
Failed generations are refunded
If a generation fails on our side, Butter Motion refunds the credits automatically. You don't need to ask. This covers a generation that doesn't compile, comes out empty, or gets cut off. The refund shows up against that generation in your credit history, and its status turns to Refunded. Same goes if you cancel a task while it's still in the queue.
Sometimes Butter Motion makes a second attempt on its own: the first draft failed an automatic check and the engine generates again, without you asking. That attempt is free: one request is always one charge, and if the clip still doesn't work out, one refund.
The one exception is a generation declined by the content policy: it's not a technical failure, so those credits are spent and not refunded. See A generation failed.
Second exception: you cancelled a generation after the work had already started. Those credits are not refunded: we had already paid the provider for that work, even if you no longer needed the result. Work counts as started from the moment it costs us money, which includes the preparation steps that run before the model itself. If nothing was spent, the credits come back. While a job is still queued, cancelling is free and the credits come straight back. The same rule covers the free first AI edit on Pro and Studio: cancel it after the work has started and the attempt counts as used, so the next edit is paid. When you cancel a card's first generation, the panel warns you about this on the spot.
During a temporary outage, any generation that fails is refunded automatically. Your credits are safe even when Butter Motion is having a bad moment.