Every reply your Clone sends is paid for in units — the platform's metering currency for AI work. Your plan includes a monthly allotment, the balance falls as your Clones work, and if it reaches zero with no top-up arranged, the Clone stops replying. This guide covers how units are counted, how the monthly cycle behaves, where to watch the balance, and the three ways to add capacity.
There isn't one. Limits are expressed in units, and a reply's unit cost depends on its size — so the same plan stretches further with short replies than with long, knowledge-heavy ones.
What a unit is
The Units included tooltip on the Plans page defines them: "Monthly processing units that power AI conversations, automated responses, and document processing. Additional units are automatically billed if exceeded. Unused units don't carry over to next month." In practice, anything that makes the AI do work on your behalf draws from the same balance:
- Clone replies — every reply sent on any connected channel.
- Playground tests — test messages run through the same metered pipeline as live replies.
- Document processing — units are consumed when you upload sources to a Knowledge library.
- Automation runs — each run that involves the Clone or an AI agent node.
There's no flat per-action price. Unit cost is token-based — it depends on the number of tokens consumed — so it scales with the size of the input and output: reply length, document size, and how much knowledge-library context gets retrieved. As a measured example, a short Clone reply came to ~7 units in live testing. Longer or knowledge-heavy replies cost more, so treat that figure as a rough data point, not a price — the per-action cost isn't shown anywhere in the Billing or Plans UI.
At ~7 units per short reply, a 2,500-unit monthly allotment (the one observed in live testing) comes out to roughly a few hundred short replies per cycle (~357 at that rate) — fewer once replies get longer or pull in more context.
Plan cycles, carry-over and overage
Your plan grants a fixed number of units per monthly cycle — the exact allotment depends on your plan and is listed on the Plans page — and the balance resets on the date shown in Billing. Unused units are forfeit at the reset: they don't carry over, so there's no saving up for a high-traffic month. Units you buy separately behave differently:
| Balance | Where it comes from | When it expires |
|---|---|---|
| Plan units remaining | Your plan's monthly allotment | Resets every cycle — unused units don't carry over |
| Prepaid balance | Extra units you purchase on top of your plan | Never expires |
The Plans tooltip says additional units are automatically billed if you exceed your allotment — but the only path by which IcloneU automatically charges your card for extra units is the Auto top-up feature, and it's off by default. Unless you opt in, running out triggers no charge: the Clone simply stops replying until the cycle resets or you buy more units.
Where to see your units
The authoritative balance lives on the Billing tab. Three steps get you there:
Open Account settings
Click your avatar in the top-right corner and choose Account settings from the menu.
Switch to the Billing tab
Open the Billing sub-tab. Three stat boxes sit side by side at the top of the page.
Read the three stat boxes
Plan units remaining shows what's left in the current cycle plus its reset date (the "Resets…" line). Prepaid balance shows purchased units, which never expire. Total available is the sum of the two. The + Add units button beside them buys more on the spot.
A second, looser indicator lives in the Dashboard header under the greeting — a counter in the form "104 of 2,500 units / 2,396 LEFT", with an "Active until" date alongside.
The Dashboard's Active until date is your plan's period-end (renewal) date — the same one shown in the Your plan section on the Your details tab. The units-cycle reset date lives on the Billing tab, in the Plan units remaining box.
What happens as you run low
You don't have to keep checking Billing. As your balance gets low, IcloneU notifies you proactively through the bell icon in the top bar — separately from the Billing stat boxes — so you have time to react before anything stops.
If the balance does reach zero and Auto top-up is off (the default), the Clone stops replying until the next monthly reset or until you buy more units. To restore service, click + Add units at the top of the Billing tab and buy a one-off top-up — replies resume as soon as the purchase completes. With Auto top-up on, the platform buys units for you before the balance empties, within a monthly cap you control — see the next section.
Increasing capacity
Three routes, depending on whether the squeeze is one-off or every month:
- One-off purchase — the + Add units button on Billing. Purchased units go to your Prepaid balance and never expire.
- Auto top-up — opt-in automatic refills whenever the balance drops below a threshold; set it up once and stop thinking about it (steps below).
- Plan upgrade — if you exceed the included units month after month, a bigger plan is usually cheaper than paying overage through Auto top-up. Use Upgrade plan in the Your plan section of the Your details tab.
Open the Auto top-up card
On Account settings → Billing, scroll to the Auto top-up card. Its own description sets expectations: units are purchased automatically when your balance drops below a threshold, charged to your default payment method — and it's off by default.
Turn on the toggle
Flip Enable auto top-up on, then set the three controls below.
Set the three controls
Trigger when balance falls below is the unit count at which a recharge fires (the form defaults to 100 units). Recharge amount is the dollar amount of units added each time (default $20.00, ≈ 1,000 units). Monthly max is the hard cap on auto-charges in a single month (default $100.00) — Billing shows a running "$0.00 of $100.00 used this month" meter against it.
TipMonthly max doubles as your cost control: auto-charges never exceed it in a single month.
Leave Auto top-up off. With it disabled, IcloneU never charges your card beyond the plan price — if you hit zero, buy a one-off top-up with + Add units whenever you choose.
The Playground spends units too
Testing isn't free. The Playground runs your Clone with its real configuration — identity, personality, knowledge and skills — through the same metered pipeline as live conversations, so every test reply draws from the same balance (the ~7-unit short reply above was measured in the Playground). It's the right place to test; just test deliberately rather than spamming long sessions. If the exact cost matters to you, measure it on your own account:
Note your balance
Open Account settings → Billing and note the Plan units remaining value.
Send one test message
Open a Clone's Playground, send a single message and wait for the reply.
Compare
Refresh the Billing tab. The drop in Plan units remaining is the cost of that one reply under your current configuration — it varies with reply length, knowledge retrieval and the skills used.
Frequently asked
No. Plan units reset each cycle and whatever you didn't use is forfeit — the Plans tooltip says so explicitly. The exception is your Prepaid balance: units you purchase yourself never expire.
There's no fixed number, because metering is token-based rather than per-reply. As a rough yardstick from live measurement, a short reply cost ~7 units, which puts a 2,500-unit monthly allotment at roughly 357 short replies per cycle — fewer as replies get longer or retrieve more knowledge.
Only if you've enabled Auto top-up, which is off by default. With it off, nothing is charged — the Clone stops replying at zero until the reset or a manual purchase. With it on, recharges go to your default card in increments of your Recharge amount, never exceeding your Monthly max in a single month.
Yes — confirmed by live measurement: with no channels connected, each Playground reply visibly decremented Plan units remaining. There's no free test mode; the Playground uses the Clone's actual configuration and the same metered path as production.
Last updated June 10, 2026 · AI Clones
