A: Hey sarah842 👋!

Great questions! Let me break down how seats and credits work:

SEATS VS CREDITS - THEY'RE SEPARATE THINGS:

Seats = Number of people who can use SheetXAI
Credits = Fuel to run AI operations

If you buy 3 seats (Tier 2), you get 3 email addresses that can access SheetXAI. But seats don't come with credits included.

WITHOUT BUYING EXTRA CREDITS, WHAT CAN YOU DO?

You have two options to actually USE SheetXAI:

OPTION 1 - BYOK (Bring Your Own Key):
Use your own API keys from providers like OpenRouter, OpenAI, Claude, etc. This gives you unlimited operations (limited only by your API provider's rate limits). No credits needed at all.

OPTION 2 - Buy credit packs:
Purchase 5,000 credit packs for $59 each (one-time purchase, credits never expire).

WHAT IS A CREDIT?

Credits are calculated with this formula:
Base cost × Model cost = Total credits used

EXAMPLES:
- Chatbot operation with GPT-4o mini: 5 (base) × 2 (model) = 10 credits
- SAI command per row with GPT-4o mini: 1 (base) × 2 (model) = 2 credits per row
- Removing duplicates: This is ONE chatbot operation = ~10 credits total (not per row)

Operations like removing duplicates, pivot tables, or marking rows count as ONE operation for the chatbot, not per row. The per-row charging only applies to SAI commands (the cell-by-cell content generation features).

CAR AND FUEL ANALOGY:

SheetXAI is the car (you own it for life with the LTD). The fuel is the AI usage (credits). You have choices:
- Option 1: Buy fuel from us - Purchase $59 credit packs. Convenient, no technical setup.
- Option 2: Buy fuel wherever you prefer - Use BYOK with OpenRouter, OpenAI, etc. You control costs and providers.

You can mix both approaches anytime.

MY RECOMMENDATION:

If you're technical and comfortable with API keys, start with BYOK. If you're non-technical, grab a credit pack to get started quickly and add BYOK later if you want.

Let me know if you have other questions! 🙂