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Shard-hosted models and credits

The Shard provider gives you AI models without an API key or a subscription. Shard pays the model company, and you pay Shard with credits.

Draft. Prices, allowances and how to buy credits are not final. Everything marked TODO (owner) needs a decision before publishing.

Using a Shard-hosted model#

Sign in to a Shard account. Guests can’t use hosted models: they see “Log into an account to use the Shard provider.”
Open Settings → AI, pick Shard in Providers, then pick a model in Models.
Chat as usual. There is no API key box for this provider.

Shard-hosted model names start with “Shard:”. Shard can turn each hosted model on or off from its side, so the list may change.

How billing works#

Credits are in US dollars. Your account can hold bonus credit and paid credit. Bonus credit is used first.
You pay per token. Each model has its own price per million tokens for input, cached input (read and write), output and reasoning.
Shard checks before it sends. Before each request, Shard sets aside enough credit for the largest possible reply. After the reply, it charges the real cost and releases the rest.
Unreported usage is not billed. If the model company doesn’t report usage for a request, Shard doesn’t charge you for it. If it reports totals but not the cached or reasoning split, those tokens are priced at the higher of the rates they could have had.
No double charges. If a request is retried with the same ID, Shard doesn’t send or bill it twice (“This Shard request was already accepted”).
Each hosted request also counts toward your message limit, like every other provider.

Pricing: TODO (owner) list the hosted models and their prices per million tokens, or link to the website’s Models page.

Buying credits: TODO (owner) explain how to add credits. The plugin has no purchase screen yet, and the Upgrade button in Settings → Account isn’t connected to anything in this version.

Seeing your balance: TODO (owner) the plugin receives your balance but doesn’t show it anywhere yet.

Allowances and daily budgets#

Allowance: your plan may include some hosted usage before credits are used. TODO (owner) describe each plan’s allowance.
Daily budgets: each hosted model has a daily usage budget, and so do hosted models as a whole. When one is reached, you see “This Shard model has reached its daily usage budget” or “Shard hosted models have reached their daily usage budget”. Try another model, or come back after the daily reset. TODO (owner) say when the daily reset happens.

Errors you may see#

Message	What to do
There isn’t enough allowance or credit for this Shard request.	Add credits, or pick another provider.
This Shard model has reached its daily usage budget.	Pick another model, or wait for the daily reset.
Shard hosted models have reached their daily usage budget.	Wait for the daily reset, or use your own API key.
We couldn’t confirm Shard billing.	Check your balance before you send again. If it keeps happening, contact us from Settings → Support.
Log into an account to use the Shard provider.	Sign in, or pick a provider that uses your own API key.