GitLab Credits and usage billing

GitLab Credits are the standardized consumption currency for usage-based billing. Credits are used for GitLab Duo Agent Platform and some non-agentic features, where each usage action consumes a number of credits. Credit-based capabilities include:

GitLab Duo Pro and Enterprise and their associated GitLab Duo features are not billed based on usage and do not consume GitLab Credits.

Credits are calculated based on the features and models you use, as listed in the credit multiplier tables. You are billed for features that are generally available. Some pre-release features also incur usage charges. If charges apply, the feature’s documentation page notes this.

Billing occurs at the root namespace or top-level group level, not at the project level. Credit usage is attributed to the subject who performs the action, regardless of which project they are using the features in. A subject is either a human user or a non-human subject (for example, a service account or a bot running an automated flow).

All usage in a root namespace or top-level group is consolidated for billing purposes.

GitLab provides three ways to obtain credits:

• Included credits
• Monthly Commitment Pool
• On-Demand credits

For a click-through demo, see GitLab Credits.

For information about credit pricing, see GitLab pricing.

For the Free tier

Users on the Free tier can purchase a Monthly Commitment Pool of GitLab Credits for their instance or group namespace. This provides access to a set of GitLab Duo Agent Platform features, without needing a Premium or Ultimate subscription.

On-demand usage for Free namespaces is capped at $25,000 for each calendar month. Upon reaching this limit, on-demand usage is automatically turned off and resets at the beginning of the following month.

Temporary evaluation credits

If you have not purchased the Monthly Commitment Pool or accepted the usage billing terms for On-Demand credits, you can request a free temporary pool of credits to evaluate credit-based features.

Credits are allocated based on the number of users you request for the evaluation, and added to a shared pool for those users. Credits are valid for 30 days, and cannot be used after they expire.

To request credits, contact the Sales team.

If you’re on the Free tier and want to try credits, you can start an Ultimate trial.

Included credits

Included credits are allocated to all users on a Premium or Ultimate tier. These credits are individual and cannot be shared between users. Included credits reset at the beginning of each month. Unused credits do not roll over to the next month.

Community program subscriptions do not receive included credits.

Non-human subjects do not receive included credits. Their consumption is billed at the namespace level from the Monthly Commitment Pool and On-Demand credits, in the same usage order as for human users.

For more information about included credits, see GitLab Promotions Terms & Conditions.

Monthly Commitment Pool

Monthly Commitment Pool is a shared pool of credits available to all users in the subscription. All users in your subscription can draw from this shared pool after they have consumed their included credits.

You can’t reserve the pool for a subset of users or isolate consumption to specific users, groups, or projects. To limit how much individual users consume, use usage caps.

You can purchase the Monthly Commitment Pool as a recurring annual or multi-year term. The number of credits purchased for the year is divided by 12.

For example, when you purchase a monthly commitment pool of 1,000 credits, you will have 1,000 credits available each month for the contract term.

You can increase your commitment at any time through your GitLab account team. The additional commitment applies for the remainder of your contract term. You can decrease your commitment only at the time of renewal.

You can purchase a commitment of credits with built-in tiered discounting. The commitment is billed up front at the start of the contract term.

Credits become available immediately after purchase, and reset on the first of every month. Unused credits do not roll over to the next month.

On-Demand credits

On-Demand credits cover usage incurred after you have used all included credits and the credits in the Monthly Committed Pool. On-Demand credits are billed monthly.

On-Demand credits are consumed at the list price of $1 per credit used.

On-Demand credits can be used after you have accepted usage billing terms. You can accept these terms when you purchase your monthly commitment, or directly in the GitLab Credits dashboard in the Customers Portal. By accepting usage billing terms, you agree to pay for all On-Demand charges already accrued in the current monthly billing period, and any On-Demand charges incurred going forward.

If you haven’t accepted usage billing terms, you can’t use credit-based features and consume On-Demand credits. You can regain access to credit-based features by either purchasing a monthly commitment or accepting the usage billing terms.

For example, a subscription has a monthly commitment of 50 credits per month. If 75 credits are used in that month, the first 50 credits are part of the monthly commitment pool, and the additional 25 are billed as on-demand usage.

Usage order

GitLab Credits are consumed in the following order:

1. Temporary evaluation credits are used first.
2. Included credits are consumed by each user before any shared credits.
3. Monthly Commitment Pool of credits is used after all included credits have been consumed.
4. On-Demand credits are used after all other available credits (included credits and Monthly Commitment Pool, if applicable) are depleted and usage billing terms are signed.

Other credit types, such as One-Time Charge credits, might apply to your subscription. For details, contact your account team.

Buy GitLab Credits

You can buy GitLab Credits for your Monthly Commitment Pool in Customers Portal.

Your GitLab Credits are displayed in the Customers Portal in the subscription card and the GitLab Credits dashboard.

Credit multipliers

Credit usage is calculated based on the features and models they use. Some features have multiple model options to choose from, while other features use only one model.

A request represents a single (billable) action initiated by a user (for example, sending a chat message or requesting code generation). This represents one interaction from the user’s perspective.

A model call represents the underlying API calls made to LLMs to fulfill a user request. A single user request might trigger multiple model calls. For example, one call to understand context and another call to generate a response.

Models

The following table lists the number of LLM calls you can make with one GitLab Credit for different models. Newer, more complex models have a higher multiplier and require more credits.

You are charged for model usage based on the following billing methods:

• Variable pricing for GitLab-managed models: A request is equivalent to a single LLM call. One flow makes one or many calls. The credit cost depends on the model used.
• Variable pricing for self-hosted models: A request is equivalent to a single LLM call. One flow makes one or many calls. You can make eight requests with one credit for any supported or compatible self-hosted model.
• Flat pricing for GitLab Duo features: Each end-to-end execution consumes a pre-set amount of credits, regardless of how many LLM calls (GitLab-managed and self-hosted models) are made during execution. Features that run on a self-hosted model receive a 20% discount on the credits consumed for an execution.
• Credit deduction for a failed execution depends on the offering:
  • On GitLab.com with GitLab-managed models, a flow that fails before it completes deducts no credits, even if some LLM calls were already made.
  • On GitLab Self-Managed with self-hosted models, for features that do not use a flat price, billing is based on individual LLM calls, not flow completion. Each call is metered when it starts, so calls made before a flow fails are still billed. This means a flow that fails partway through may still consume credits for the calls that were already initiated. For flat-priced features, the full flat price is charged even if the flow fails, regardless of how many LLM calls were actually made.

For subsidized models with basic integration:

For premium models with optimized integration:

Footnotes:

1. Promotional pricing through December 31, 2026. Afterwards, the rate changes to approximately 3.3 calls per credit.
2. Promotional pricing for GPT-5.6 Sol through November 21, 2026. Afterwards, the rates change to approximately 1.0 calls per credit for the short context window and 0.57 for the long context window.
3. Short context window of up to 272,000 tokens.
4. Long context window of more than 272,000 tokens.

Features

The following table lists the number of executions you can make with one GitLab Credit for different features. This pricing applies to all models (including self-hosted models) available for the feature.

A feature that runs on a self-hosted model receives a 20% discount.

For GitLab Duo Agentic Chat, one sent message counts as one or more billable requests, because one or more LLM calls are made to answer the question. One conversation window can include multiple messages, and so multiple billable requests. The pricing depends on the selected model.

The following features also consume credits, but with a different consumption model:

• GitLab Secrets Manager
• Hosted runners for GitLab Dedicated