Pricing

How it works

PDFBase uses prepaid credits. Buy a pack, use them whenever. No monthly commitments, no unused credits going to waste. 1 credit = 1 successful PDF operation (generation, render, merge, extract, etc.) Failed requests cost 0 credits. You only pay for successful output.

Credit packs

Pack	Credits	Price per credit	Savings
Starter	1,000	$0.010	—
Growth	5,500	$0.009	10% off
Scale	25,000	$0.008	20% off

Credits are valid for 12 months from purchase date. Unused credits after 12 months expire.

Free tier

Every new account gets 100 free credits. No credit card required. Build, test, and ship before you pay anything. Free credits work identically to purchased credits — no watermarks, no feature restrictions, no rate limit differences.

Auto-refill

Set a threshold and a pack size. When your balance drops below the threshold, we automatically purchase the selected pack using your saved payment method.

Example: Refill 5,500 credits when balance drops below 500.

Configure auto-refill in your dashboard billing settings.

Auto-refill prevents service interruptions. If your balance hits 0 without auto-refill, API calls return 402 Payment Required until you purchase more credits.

What costs a credit

Operation	Credits	Phase
Generate PDF (HTML or URL)	1	Phase 1
Render template	1	Phase 1
Each item in a batch	1 per item	Phase 1
Merge PDFs	1	Phase 2
Split PDF	1 per output file	Phase 2
Add watermark	1	Phase 2
Office-to-PDF conversion	1	Phase 2
Generate thumbnail	1	Phase 2
Extract text	1	Phase 3
OCR extraction	1	Phase 3
Table extraction	1	Phase 3
AI structured extraction	2	Phase 3

AI structured extraction costs 2 credits because it runs an LLM inference step on top of text extraction. All other operations cost 1 credit.

What’s free (0 credits)

Failed requests (any error response)
Retrieving PDF metadata (GET /v1/pdfs/:id)
Listing resources (GET /v1/pdfs, GET /v1/templates)
Template CRUD (create, update, delete)
Webhook endpoint management
Debug mode (no extra credit cost — just pass debug: true)
Request replay from dashboard

Balance headers

Every API response includes your current credit balance:

X-Credits-Remaining: 4,287
X-Credits-Used: 1

When your balance is low (below 100 credits), responses include a warning header:

X-Credits-Warning: Balance low. 47 credits remaining.

When credits run out

If your balance reaches 0, API calls that consume credits return 402 Payment Required:

{
  "error": {
    "type": "payment_required",
    "code": "insufficient_credits",
    "message": "Your credit balance is 0. Purchase more credits at https://app.pdfbase.dev/billing",
    "param": null,
    "credits_remaining": 0
  }
}

Read-only operations (GET endpoints, listing resources) continue to work with 0 credits.

Payment processing

Payments are processed by Dodo Payments. All major credit cards, UPI, and international payment methods are supported. Invoices are available in your dashboard.

Enterprise

Need custom volume pricing, SLAs, or dedicated infrastructure? Contact us.

Get Started

Core Concepts

Guides

Integrations

Resources

How it works

Credit packs

Free tier

Auto-refill

What costs a credit

What’s free (0 credits)

Balance headers

When credits run out

Payment processing

Enterprise

​How it works

​Credit packs

​Free tier

​Auto-refill

​What costs a credit

​What’s free (0 credits)

​Balance headers

​When credits run out

​Payment processing

​Enterprise

How it works

Credit packs

Free tier

Auto-refill

What costs a credit

What’s free (0 credits)

Balance headers

When credits run out

Payment processing

Enterprise