How Website Studio Credits Work
Website Studio in Search Atlas allows users to build full multi-page websites — not just single landing pages. To support this expanded capability, Website Studio uses a credit-based monthly quota system that determines how much you can build within your plan.
This article explains:
- How the updated quota structure works
- What actions consume credits
- What does not consume credits
- What happens when you reach your limit
- How to handle credits consumed by failed operations
- How to reallocate Hyperdrive Credits (HDC) into your Website Studio quota
📊 Website Studio Credit Allocation by Plan
Each plan includes a fixed number of Website Studio credits per month:
- Starter → 20 credits
- Growth → 40 credits
- Pro → 60 credits
- Agency → 100 credits
Your credits reset automatically every month based on your billing cycle. Previously created pages and websites are not removed when credits reset.
🏗️ What You Can Build
- Single landing pages
- Multi-page websites
- Full site builds with structured navigation
🔢 What Consumes Website Studio Quota
Credits are deducted based on actual usage intensity. Approximate usage cost:
- Build new landing page → ~3–6 credits
- Edits → 0.5–1 credit
- Multi-page builds → Variable (depends on size and generation complexity)
- Site clone operations → Variable, based on size of cloned site
The exact credit usage depends on page length, content volume, layout complexity, and AI generation workload.
✅ Important Rule — Failures and Credit Deduction
If a command fails cleanly, no quota is deducted. You are only charged credits for successful generation actions.
Exception: In rare cases — particularly during clone operations or generation tasks that encounter a 500 server error — credits may still be deducted by failed attempts. If you notice your credit balance has dropped without successful output:
- Note the approximate time and operation (e.g., "site clone failed with 500 error").
- Contact Search Atlas support.
- Our billing team will verify the failed attempts and restore the incorrectly consumed credits.
This restoration process has been confirmed in resolved support cases.
🚫 What Does NOT Consume Credits
- Viewing existing Website Studio projects
- Managing previously created websites
- Publishing changes (only the edit generation consumes credits)
Once a page or website exists, you retain full access to it.
⏳ Monthly Reset Behavior
Credits refresh automatically each month. If you use all available credits:
- You regain your full plan allowance at the next billing cycle
- All previously created pages and websites remain fully accessible
- Nothing is paused, removed, or disabled
Example: If you are on the Starter plan (20 credits) and use all credits building multiple pages, next month you will again have 20 credits — while keeping everything you already built.
🔁 Reallocating Hyperdrive Credits (HDC) to Website Studio
If you need more Website Studio (LPS) credits before your next reset, you can request a reallocation of unused Hyperdrive Credits (HDC) into your Website Studio quota.
- Conversion ratio: 1 HDC = 1 Website Studio (LPS) credit
- How to request: Contact Search Atlas support and specify how many HDC you want reallocated
- Effect: The requested HDC are consumed from your Hyperdrive balance and added to your Website Studio quota
Example (confirmed support case): A customer with 43 LPS credits requested reallocation of 12 HDC. After reallocation, their Hyperdrive balance decreased by 12, and their Website Studio quota increased from 43 to 55.
Reallocation is a manual process handled by the billing team and is generally completed within one business day.
🚨 What Happens When You Reach the Limit
When your Website Studio credits are fully used:
- All existing projects remain accessible
- No websites are removed
- No pages are unpublished
- Editing and publishing continue to work (unless new generation is required)
- You simply cannot generate new content until credits refresh — or until you reallocate HDC (see above)
This behavior is expected and does not indicate a system issue.
🛠️ Troubleshooting: Credits Dropped Unexpectedly
If your Website Studio credit balance drops without a corresponding successful build:
- Check recent activity for failed clone attempts or generation errors (especially 500 errors).
- Do not retry repeatedly — each failed attempt may compound the issue.
- Contact support with the timestamp and a description of what you were attempting.
- Our billing team will review and, if appropriate, restore the credits that were consumed by the failed operations.
🔄 About Credit Cost Optimization
The credit cost per action listed above reflects the current usage structure. As we continue optimizing AI models, infrastructure, and generation efficiency, the cost per action may decrease over time.