Costs & safeguards
Exactly how generation spends money, the per-day cap, and the reserve-and-refund logic that protects you from surprise bills.
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Generation is the one place 3dCMS touches real money, so it's wrapped in safeguards.
The prices, in credits
Every screen that asks you to approve a generation quotes it in gen credits, whether the bill lands on your plan or on your own fal key. One credit is a penny of AI provider cost (1 credit = $0.01), so these are the charge, not a rounded-off version of it.
| Action | Cost | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Generate a 3D model | 20 credits ($0.20) | ~1–3 min |
| …at high detail | 30 credits ($0.30) | ~1–3 min |
| …from a reference image | 30 credits ($0.30), or 40 at high detail | ~1–3 min |
| Generate a material | 8 credits ($0.08) | ~15–30 s |
High detail is the only tier that buys the HD texture, which is where the extra 10 credits go, so leaving detail on its low default is both cheaper and faster. Attaching a reference image adds 10 more, because it runs on a different, image-to-3D endpoint.
The quote on the button is the real price. The confirm card re-prices itself as you change anything that moves the charge: the tier control, an attached reference image, and a prompt that reads as high detail ("photorealistic", "intricate", "hi-res") and therefore bumps the tier on its own. So the figure you approve is the figure that gets charged, rather than a base price the extras quietly climbed past.
The safeguards
- Confirm before spending. With the confirm guard on, every generation shows a Generate/Skip button with the credit price first. Skip and the Assistant carries on without spending.
- A daily cap. There's a per-account cap on how many generations a day your own key can drive: 25/day on free, rising to 150, 400 and 1,000 on the paid plans, with a matching dollar ceiling. Hit it and generation politely stops until tomorrow.
- Reserve and refund. The cost is reserved against your cap before the job runs and refunded if it fails, so a failed generation never counts against you.
- Your key, used once. The fal key is sent per request and never stored on the server.