SocialCTL charges credits per action. Each plan grants a monthly bucket; you can top up anytime with one-time packs. Here's the full cost table, what each action does, and what that translates to in dollars.
The full credit cost table
| Action | Credits | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Reel / short video | 10 | Full MP4 reel rendered via Remotion (9:16 / 1:1 / 16:9), with scenes, music, voice-over. |
| UGC video | 10 | UGC-style talking video. |
| Instagram carousel | 4 | 3–12 slide carousel, on-brand, with caption and hashtags. |
| LinkedIn carousel | 4 | 3–12 slide carousel, LinkedIn essay format. |
| Static post | 2 | Single image post for any platform. |
| Calendar day re-roll | 1 | New title + hook + caption + hashtags for one calendar slot. |
| Full calendar regenerate | 10 | Drops the month and rebuilds 8–12 fresh slot ideas in one AI call. |
| Video re-render / chat patch | 2 | One accepted AI source patch on a video composition, or one full MP4 re-render. |
| Project topic bank generate | 2 | 8–14 AI-drafted post topics for a campaign or casual project. |
| Carousel slide regenerate | ~1 per slide | Re-roll a single slide with a custom prompt. Cost is total/N rounded up to 1. |
All costs are admin-tunable per workspace at /admin/credit-costs. The numbers above are the defaults.
What does that translate to in dollars?
Depends on the plan. Roughly:
- Starter — entry-level subscription with a monthly credit grant
- Growth — mid-tier, more credits, lower per-credit cost
- Scale — agency tier, highest grant, lowest per-credit cost
Across plans, a reel works out to roughly $0.50–$2.00, a carousel to $0.20–$0.80, a static post to $0.10–$0.40. One-time top-up packs (Starter, Creator, Studio) cover spikes.
Why credits and not "unlimited"?
Three reasons:
1. AI generation has real per-call costs
Every reel render hits Remotion (compute), AI providers (Claude/OpenAI/OpenRouter/Gemini for the composition draft + scene text + voice-over), and image generation (OpenAI gpt-image-1, Flux 1.1 Pro via OpenRouter, or Gemini 2.5 Flash Image). "Unlimited" plans either:
- Throttle silently at high volume (you discover the limit when you hit it)
- Use the cheapest possible models (slideshow output, generic captions)
- Absorb the cost in massively higher subscription fees ($300+/mo)
2. You see what you spend
The /app/usage page shows every credit, every action, every day. Sortable by reason, content type, time. Before clicking Generate, you can see the cost. No surprise bills.
3. Failures refund automatically
If a render fails before it ships (queued, generating, failed, draft), credits return to your balance in the same transaction. Pieces that already published or scheduled don't refund because the value has been delivered. The credit ledger is append-only, so every charge and refund is auditable.
The hidden cost of "unlimited AI"
Most "unlimited" social tools price at $99–$299/mo. They're priced to absorb worst-case usage from a small minority of heavy users; for the median user, you're paying for capacity you'll never touch. Credit-based pricing inverts that: the median user pays less for what they actually use.
A 10-reel, 4-carousel, 8-static month at default rates: 10×10 + 4×4 + 8×2 = 132 credits. Most plans grant 300+ credits/month — you'd have headroom for a full calendar regen plus topic-bank generations across two campaign projects.
Try the math
Generate a free sample month to see how many credits a real-world cadence would cost. The /try flow doesn't charge — it shows you exactly what each piece would cost on a paid plan.