Pay-As-You-Go Overflow
Keep coding past your DevPass monthly allowance with an opt-in credits balance
By default a DevPass plan is a hard cap: once the monthly allowance is fully used, requests are rejected until renewal. Pay-as-you-go overflow is an opt-in on the DevPass Usage page that keeps requests flowing past the allowance — extra usage bills a credits balance at provider rates, with the same API key and the same coding agents. The Usage page also carries the full allowance meters, the weekly premium allowance, Reset Passes, and the model usage chart.
Overflow is off by default — until you enable it, nothing ever charges past your subscription price. It never touches your plan allowance either: credits are spent only after the monthly pool is fully used.
When overflow applies
| Situation | Overflow off (default) | Overflow on |
|---|---|---|
| Within the monthly allowance | Plan credits | Plan credits |
| Monthly allowance exhausted | Requests rejected with 402 | Requests bill your credits balance |
| Weekly premium cap hit, allowance remaining | Reset Pass or wait | Reset Pass or wait — unchanged |
| Weekly premium cap hit, allowance exhausted | Requests rejected with 402 | Premium models bill your balance |
| Credits balance empty | — | Requests rejected with 402 |
Mid-cycle, the weekly premium fair-use cap still applies even with overflow on — a Reset Pass remains the way to more premium usage inside your plan. Overflow takes over only once the monthly pool itself is gone: at that point you are paying provider rates from your own balance, so the fair-use cap no longer gates premium models.
If the allowance runs out with overflow off (or with an empty balance), the gateway's 402 says what to do:
{
"error": {
"message": "Dev Plan credit limit reached. Upgrade your plan or wait for renewal on 8/24/2026. Or enable pay-as-you-go overflow in your DevPass dashboard to keep going past your allowance.",
"type": "invalid_request_error",
"code": "billing_error"
}
}Topping up
Enable overflow on the Usage page, pick a preset ($10, $25, $50, $100) or a custom amount between $10 and $5,000, and Top up — the charge goes to the card already backing your DevPass subscription, with no checkout redirect. Usage itself is metered at provider rates with no markup on tokens; a 5% platform fee applies when you buy credits (plus 1.5% for international cards). Each top-up emails a PDF invoice and appears in your billing history.
Top-ups are idempotent end to end: a double-click or a retried request reuses the same charge instead of creating a second one.
Auto-reload
Turn on Auto-reload and the balance refills itself: when it falls below your threshold ($5–$1,000), your reload amount ($10–$5,000) is charged to the saved card automatically.
Guardrails worth knowing:
- Disabling overflow always disables auto-reload — you can never buy credits you cannot spend.
- Failed auto-reload charges back off exponentially (1h doubling up to 24h), and auto-reload switches itself off after 7 days of continuous payment failures.
Overflow is available on every DevPass tier. If you find yourself covering a lot of usage from the balance every cycle, a tier upgrade is usually the better deal: plan allowances turn every subscription dollar into $3 of usage, while overflow bills at cost. Compare on the DevPass pricing page.
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