A: Hey SGWarrior,

Good question about how credits work! Here’s the breakdown:

What AgenticFlow Credits Cover: Your included monthly credits (from your Tier) primarily cover:
The fixed cost for every step executed in a workflow or by an agent (this covers platform overhead). On Tier 3/4, this is 3 credits per step; on Tier 1/2, it's 4 credits.
The variable cost for using our built-in LLM models (currently GPT-4o-mini, Gemini-2.0-flash, DeepSeek V3). The cost depends on the tokens used.
When BYOK is Needed (Or Optional):
If you want to use other, more powerful LLMs (like full GPT-4, Claude Opus/Sonnet, Perplexity etc.), you must use Bring Your Own Key (BYOK). When you use BYOK for these LLMs, the variable cost for that specific LLM call is billed directly to your API key provider (OpenAI, Anthropic etc.), not your AgenticFlow credits. However, the fixed step cost still applies and uses your AgenticFlow credits.
Image/Video Features & Pixel ML OpenRouter:
Features like AI image generation, QR Art, video creation, etc., rely on specialized external AI models.
These are accessed via the Pixel ML OpenRouter. Using these specific image/video nodes is NOT covered by your included AgenticFlow credits.
Think of the Pixel ML OpenRouter like a separate pay-as-you-go system specifically for these advanced media generation tasks. You'll be billed separately by Pixel ML for usage on these nodes (similar conceptually to how BYOK works for LLMs, but billed via Pixel ML).
In short: Your included credits cover platform operation and the built-in text LLMs. Stronger text LLMs require BYOK (billed by the provider). Image/video generation requires using the Pixel ML OpenRouter (billed separately by Pixel ML).

You can read more about credits here: https://docs.agenticflow.ai/get-started/faqs#what-is-a-credit