Every Helious plan comes with credits. Everything your account does spends from the same wallet: an API or MCP data call, a live answer on a plan that runs an hour behind, a typed question to Ask Helious. This page says what a credit buys, how to get one call live when you are not on Pro, how to read your balance, and what to do when you run low. Reading helious.io costs nothing.
/v1 address or any MCP data tool.fresh=1 to the request, or put "fresh": true in the MCP tool's arguments.| Action | Credits | Notes |
|---|---|---|
A data call on any /v1 address or any MCP data tool | 1 | Charged when the answer carries data. Every plan but Ultimate, which has no cap. |
The same call answered live on Free, Squawk or Starter (fresh=1) | 5 | News, prints, auctions, boards and prices at the live instant. Costs nothing extra on Pro and Ultimate, and nothing on a lane that is live already (a settlement price, a published rate, Starter's news). |
| A typed Ask Helious question that lands an answer | 10 | Handed back when no answer reaches you. On Pro and Ultimate the preset questions are free. |
A snapshot on the delayed /v1/stream lane, on Free or with no key | 1 | Once a minute while the socket is open. A paid plan's stream takes nothing. |
/v1/me, /v1/access, the MCP handshake, get_access_info, list_series | 0 | How you learn what a credit buys and what you have left. Never charged. |
| Every error, every 429, every market wall served without a key, every empty window | 0 | You pay for data, never for being refused. A charge taken before an error is refunded on the way out. |
| Plan | Credits | How the data arrives |
|---|---|---|
| Sample, no key | 50 a month | Shared by everyone calling from your network address. No fresh flag: a free key has one. |
| Free | 100 a month | An hour behind for 1 credit a call. One call live for 5 with fresh=1. |
| Starter | 1,500 a month | An hour behind for 1 credit a call. One call live for 5 with fresh=1. |
| Pro | 3,000 a month | Everything live for 1 credit a call. The fresh flag costs nothing extra. |
| Ultimate | No cap | No cap. Fair use: the plan's calls a minute, and 100 typed Ask Helious questions a day. |
Plan credits come back each period: on your billing date on a paid plan, on the 1st of the month on Free. The new period sets the allowance; it does not add to what is left. Squawk is on the free allowance: the plan is the live voice squawk and nothing else live. Prices and the rest of each plan are on the pricing page.
A worked month on Free. 100 credits is 100 data calls an hour behind. Or 20 calls live. Or 10 typed questions. Or a mix: 60 held calls, 4 live calls at 5 each (20) and 2 typed questions at 10 each (20) add up to 100.
On Free, Squawk and Starter every answer is 60 minutes behind, by the plan's design. When one call has to be current, ask for it on the request:
?fresh=1 to the address."fresh": true in the tool's arguments.The answer tells you which view you got. A live answer's citation line reads "This is live data",
its meta.delay_sec is 0 and its meta.fresh is true. A held answer says how far behind it
is, and meta.live_view says how to get it live. On a lane that is live for you already (a settlement
price, a published rate, the news on Starter) the flag buys nothing, costs nothing, and the answer says so. With
fewer than 5 credits left the live call is refused with out_of_credits and nothing is charged; the
same call without the flag still answers for 1. On Pro and Ultimate every answer is live already, so the flag
is accepted and costs nothing extra. Without a key there is no flag: the price addresses answer with the steps to
a free key, and the key opens every board.
Every charged answer carries X-Credits-Charged and X-Credits-Remaining, and
the same two numbers in its meta block as credits_charged and credits_left.
GET https://api.helious.io/v1/me says what your key is, what is left and when the plan credits come back.
GET https://api.helious.io/v1/access and the get_access_info MCP tool add the whole ladder and the exact
next step to relay. Neither costs a credit. In the terminal the balance is under Account, then Subscription, and
the Ask Helious drawer shows it under the composer.
The call is refused with HTTP 429 and the code out_of_credits. Nothing is charged for a
refusal. The body says what to do: credits_left, resets_on (when the plan credits come
back), retry_after_seconds, next_step (one sentence to relay), packs (the
code, credits and price of each pack on sale), topup_url while a pack is on sale,
upgrade_url and, on Free, Squawk and Starter, fresh_costs, so a refused
fresh=1 call can say why 5 were needed. The MCP server relays the same body as an
isError tool result, and the delayed stream closes with it when a minute's snapshot cannot be paid
for. /v1/me and /v1/access still answer, so an empty wallet never hides the page that
explains it. Ultimate has no credit cap.
When the credits run low there are two ways to keep going, and you choose. Either lands on your account within a minute, and nothing about an API integration changes.
A one-off charge, bought in the terminal under Account, then Subscription, or from the Ask Helious drawer when it offers one: 500 credits for $9.99 or 1,500 credits for $24.99. Every plan can buy one, Free included.
More credits every month, and fresher data. Starter has 1,500 credits a month with the news live. Pro has 3,000 with everything live and the terminal. Ultimate has no cap.
Credits buy usage; your plan sets how fresh the data is, and a live answer on a free key is 5 credits.
A typed question costs 10 credits from the same wallet, charged once however many tools the answer reaches for, and handed back when no answer lands. On Pro and Ultimate the preset questions on the opening screen are free. On Free, Squawk and Starter the assistant answers an hour behind; on Pro and Ultimate it is live. Questions about Helious itself, its plans and how to buy never spend credits. Ultimate spends nothing and has a fair-use limit of 100 typed questions a day. More in the help centre.
Before this, the free API had a daily call budget and Ask Helious had credits of its own, and the two could not see each other. Now there is one wallet. Free went from a question a day to 100 credits a month and every price board an hour behind. Pro went from a monthly Ask allowance to 3,000 credits a month for everything. A question went from 1 credit to 10, so every balance already on an account was multiplied by ten on the same day: a person holding seven questions still holds seven questions.
The API reference is at helious.io/developers, the assistant setup at helious.io/ai, the help centre's credits and packs article covers the terminal, and every plan with its price is at helious.io/pricing.