Usage, Keys, And Billing

Top up non-expiring PAYG credits, optionally subscribe to Pro, and understand measured-energy billing.

PAYG And Pro Billing

PAYG has no monthly fee. Add $20, $50, $100, or $250 in usage credits and requests are charged at $10/kWh on Standard or $8.50/kWh on Flex, from measured energy when available.

Aegis Pro costs $10 per month and includes $5 of monthly usage credit, reserved concurrency, and advanced optimizer controls. The Pro credit expires at the end of its billing period; PAYG credits never expire.

Optimization is included for every paid user. When it reduces measured energy, the customer keeps the savings automatically; Aegis does not promise a fixed token-to-kWh reduction or pay a separate efficiency dividends.

There is no free trial or signup balance. Credits are restricted to Aegis API requests and have no redeemable cash value. PAYG capacity is best-effort shared; Pro capacity includes two reserved global slots.

Service Tiers: Standard And Flex

Every request runs on the customer-selected model. Choose Standard for the fastest response start, or Flex for a lower price in exchange for potentially slower request startup.

Standard: $10.00 per physical kWh. Best for interactive chat, live coding and debugging.

Flex: $8.50 per physical kWh. Best for autonomous coding agents, repository analysis, background research, code review and batch work.

Flex requires stream=true. A request that selects Flex without streaming is rejected with an OpenAI-compatible validation error (code flex_requires_streaming) and is never silently downgraded to Standard unless the customer explicitly sets aegis.allow_standard_fallback.

  • Select the tier per request via the service_tier body field: "standard" or "flex".
  • Omit service_tier to use the API key's default tier (Standard for existing keys).
  • Override the default per API key from Console > API Keys > change default tier.
  • Flex may delay request startup; Aegis does not guarantee a specific queue time.
Customer billing always uses physical energy consumed. The Flex upstream discount (0.65 multiplier) applies only to Aegis's upstream COGS, never to the customer's measured physical energy.

API Key Lifecycle

Create keys from Console > API Keys. Keys are labeled, shown once at creation time, and can be deleted later from the same page.

  • Use separate keys for local development, CI, and production agents.
  • Rotate a key immediately if it lands in shell history, logs, or a shared paste.
  • Deleting a key stops every client that still uses it.

Model Billing Behavior

Aegis keys are not model-locked. The client chooses the model on each request, and Aegis does not silently substitute a different customer-selected model. Billing primarily follows measured energy and uses a deterministic upstream-cost fallback when energy is unavailable.

Use the Models page to compare context limits and pricing characteristics before pinning one model in an agent config.

  • Billable POST /v1 requests may start with any positive balance. Aegis atomically reserves the lesser of the available balance and the $0.25 per-request ceiling, so a $0.10 wallet funds one request limited to $0.10 while a $0.50 wallet can fund two $0.25 requests; GET /v1/models remains available for discovery.
  • The exact dollar charge is reconciled after final usage arrives: unused reservation funds are released and measured energy or trustworthy upstream-cost evidence determines the actual debit.
  • If a request reaches its actual reservation, Aegis cancels upstream. Streaming clients receive the billing-specific aegis_insufficient_credits event; partial-cap non-streaming requests are metered through an internal upstream stream and receive HTTP 402 without partial output when exhausted.
  • Request IDs, charges, tokens, energy, refunds, and adjustments appear in the dashboard history.