What an AI Step costs
The AI Step generates content while the flow is running. Apart from the emails a flow sends, it is the only step that costs credits, and it is charged every time it runs, for every contact.
The cost
An AI Step costs 2 credits per run — the same as a light tool run.
That is small per contact and large in aggregate, and the difference catches people out:
| Contacts through the step | Credits |
|---|---|
| 100 | 200 |
| 1,000 | 2,000 |
| 10,000 | 20,000 |
Two AI Steps in the same flow doubles it. The credits come from the workspace owner's balance.
If the balance runs out, the AI Step is skipped for that contact and the flow carries on, rather than holding the journey up.
Before you put one in a busy flow
Ask whether the content genuinely has to differ per contact.
Most of the time it does not. Merge tags cost nothing — {{first_name}}, {{last_name}} and {{email}} personalise an ordinary email for free, and for the majority of flows that is the personalisation people actually notice.
An AI Step earns its cost when the content depends on something specific to that person that you cannot express as a template — a summary of what they browsed, a recommendation from their order history. If you would be happy with the same sentence for everyone, write the sentence.
Keeping it under control
- Put the AI Step after a Condition, so only the contacts who need it reach it, rather than everyone who enters the flow.
- Prefer one AI Step over several.
- Watch Credits in your account menu for the first few days after activating a flow with an AI Step in it. That is when a miscalculation shows up.
The rest of a flow
Delays, conditions, tags, audience changes and webhooks are free. Send Email is charged like any other email: 25 credits per 1,000 emails, so 1,000 contacts through one email step is 25 credits — far less than an AI Step on the same contacts. See Running out of credits for what a flow does when the balance runs out.
Next: open your automation and check whether the AI Step sits behind a Condition — that one change is usually the biggest saving available.
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