What happens after the included credit runs out? | Locus Founder

When your included monthly credit is spent, any additional agent activity — API calls, model inference, compute — is billed at cost plus a margin of up to 30%. You stay in control: the optional auto-top-up is off by default, so nothing extra happens unless you turn it on. Your workspace keeps running; the agent just pauses on tasks that would incur new spend until you add more credit.

How the credit model works

Every Locus workspace runs on agent credit. Credit is consumed when the agent does real work: fetching data, calling AI models, running outreach, generating ad copy, probing a live site. When the agent idles or waits on your approval, nothing is consumed.

Both paid plans include a monthly credit allowance:

Founder Monthly — $25 your first month, then $50/month, includes a monthly credit allowance
Founder Annual — $500/year (two months free), includes the same monthly credit allowance

New workspaces open with a 24-hour free trial that includes $5 of agent credit. You need a card on file, but if you cancel before the trial ends you are never charged.

What "at cost plus up to 30%" means

Locus passes through what third-party APIs actually cost — model inference, search calls, browser automation — and adds a margin of up to 30% to cover infrastructure and reliability. It is not a fixed per-task fee; it scales with actual consumption.

In practice this means a low-activity workspace (slow season, a business in maintenance mode, a week of mostly approvals) spends very little. A high-activity workspace (outreach campaign, ad iteration loop, domain setup) spends more. You can always check your credit balance in the workspace dashboard before authorizing work that might push you into overage.

Auto-top-up: off by default

The most important thing to understand about ai agent usage based billing on Locus is that auto-top-up is disabled by default. You will not wake up to a surprise charge because the agent ran overnight.

When auto-top-up is off and credit hits zero, the agent pauses. It will not continue agent-originated tasks until you either:

Top up manually from the billing screen, or
Enable auto-top-up with a cap you set

You keep the final word — on spend as much as on any customer-facing action.

Credit covers what the agent spends to operate. There is a separate, success-based fee tied to what your business earns:

Locus adds a 1% fee on each successful customer payment (settled in your own Stripe account — Locus never holds funds).
Once a business clears $1,000 of revenue in a calendar month, Locus takes 5% of revenue above that line. The first $1,000 each month is entirely yours.

These fees only trigger if the business is making money. A workspace that has not yet landed a paying customer pays nothing in revenue share.

What you own regardless of billing

Billing state does not affect ownership. Your domain, your Stripe account, your customer list, and your content are yours. Locus provides a one-click export of all three. If you ever stop paying, you leave with everything the business has built — the agent was the cofounder, not the owner.

Practical guidance: sizing your usage

A few patterns that tend to control credit spend without slowing down real work:

Batch approvals. The agent queues customer-facing actions — messages, ad copy, pricing changes — and waits. Reviewing a batch once a day instead of approving each item in real time does not cause the agent to re-run expensive steps.

Pause during quiet periods. If a business is between campaigns or waiting on a domain to propagate, pausing the workspace stops autonomous credit spend entirely.

Review before launch. Before the agent starts a new outreach campaign or ad set, it will surface a plan for your approval. That approval step is the natural moment to ask "how much will this cost" before committing.

What does Locus cost? — Full breakdown of Founder Monthly, Founder Annual, revenue share, and the 1% payment fee.
Full FAQ — Every common question about how Locus works, what it builds, and how to get started.

Frequently asked questions

Does the agent stop completely when credit runs out?

Agent-originated tasks pause. You can still log in, review pending approvals, and manage the workspace. The agent resumes as soon as credit is available.

Can I set a monthly spending cap?

Auto-top-up is off by default, which means your included credit is effectively a natural cap. If you enable auto-top-up, you set the top-up amount and frequency — it does not run open-ended.

Is the 30% margin on top of cost the same as a typical SaaS markup?

It is a ceiling, not a fixed rate. Locus charges up to 30% over raw API cost to cover infrastructure. The margin covers reliability infrastructure — retries, queuing, monitoring — that you would otherwise have to build and maintain yourself.

Does a paused workspace still count toward my monthly credit?

No. Credit is only consumed when the agent is actively doing work. A paused workspace or one waiting on your approval does not draw down your balance.

Ready to see how far the included credit gets you? Open a workspace at locusfounder.com — the first 24 hours and $5 of agent credit are free, no commitment required.