Credits & Billing

What costs a credit

Credits are organisation-wide, not per-key. They are shared with the REST API: any credits purchased for your account are usable across both surfaces.

How charging works

For every paid tools/call:

1. The server debits 1 credit before running the tool.
2. The request executes (with a 15-second timeout).
3. On success, the response is returned with credits.charged: 1.
4. On error or timeout, the credit is automatically refunded and credits.refunded: true. You are not billed for failed lookups.

Argument validation runs before the charge step, so malformed requests never consume a credit.

Reading your balance

Every response includes the live balance in result._meta.precursor.credits:

"credits": {
  "charged": 1,
  "remaining": 9998,
  "refunded": false
}

For a quick, free balance check, call the account_status tool. It is the only tool that returns credit balance and key metadata at no cost.

curl -s https://mcp.precursorintelligence.com \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $PRECURSOR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/call","params":{"name":"account_status","arguments":{}}}'

Insufficient credits

Once your balance drops below 1, paid tool calls return:

{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "id": 1,
  "error": { "code": -32002, "message": "insufficient_credits" }
}

The response carries HTTP status 402. The error persists until you top up from your dashboard. Free methods (initialize, tools/list, ping) and the account_status tool continue to work, so you can always check your balance before topping up.

Cost guidance per tool

Every paid tool costs exactly 1 credit per successful call. There are no premium tools, and pagination does not multiply the cost (one call to search_iocs with limit: 200 is still 1 credit). To keep spend low:

• Filter aggressively. A broad query with no type filters may return truncated results at the same cost as a precise, targeted one.
• Cache locally where appropriate. CVE and CPE data refreshes on a 60-second cadence at the source.
• Use account_status for health checks: it returns your credit balance and key metadata in one free call.