Account & Billing: Intelligence Units

What this page is

Intelligence Units (IUs) are the fuel Verinode's AI runs on. Every time your Co-COO does real work on your behalf, running the cross-section orchestrator, drafting a plan on a decision, generating a survey, analyzing a document, it spends IUs. Reading your own data, browsing every section, and receiving autonomous signals never cost anything. The Billing page is where you see your current IU balance, add more IUs when you need them, and control whether Verinode is allowed to charge your card automatically when you run low.

Verinode never sells your data to carriers, and this page never asks you to pay for that trust, it only charges for the AI work you choose to spend. You decide what to buy and when; Verinode surfaces the options and the math, it does not push a purchase on you.

Where to find it

Open Account from the sidebar, then Billing, at /account/billing. The page title reads "Intelligence Units" under the small-caps label "Billing," with a USD / CAD currency toggle in the top right corner. Switching that toggle updates every price on the page to the currency you picked; it does not change what currency you are actually billed in, that is locked at checkout.

While your balance is loading, the page simply reads "Loading balance…" where the summary will appear.

Your balance summary

At the top of the page, under Available, you see a single large number: your total Intelligence Units on hand right now. That total adds together every bucket you hold, what's left of this month's included allotment, any bonus credits, active recurring-subscription credits, and one-time bundles you've purchased, into one balance. If your account is paused because that balance has hit zero, a line appears directly beneath it: "AI is paused. Operator-initiated work is queued." Your data keeps flowing in and autonomous signals keep appearing; only AI work you ask for by name is on hold until you add IUs.

Beside it, under This month, you see how much of your monthly included allotment you've used, written as "X of Y included used (Z%)," with a thin progress bar underneath. The bar runs teal while you have room left and switches to copper once you've used 80% or more of the month's allotment, a visual heads-up before you actually run dry. If you also hold prepaid bundle IUs (see below), a line under the bar reads "+ N prepaid bundle IUs available," so you can see that even if the included allotment runs out, you still have a cushion.

If you are on the free Contributor plan (or your tier hasn't loaded yet), there is no monthly allotment to show. Instead the page reads: "Your Contributor plan includes a starter allocation of Intelligence Units. Become an Executive, Premier, or Reserve Member for a full monthly capacity and every AI feature." A See tiers → link opens the membership pricing options.

Add Intelligence Units

Below the balance, the Add Intelligence Units section reads: "Three ways to add IUs beyond your monthly allotment. AI actions pause when your balance reaches zero. We never auto-charge unless you explicitly turn on auto-top-up below." Those three ways are laid out as follows.

One-time bundles

Labeled "Discrete prepaid. Use anytime within 12 months," four buttons let you buy a fixed block of IUs outright:

| Bundle | USD | CAD | |---|---|---| | 250 IUs | $65 | $90 | | 1,000 IUs | $230 | $320 | | 5,000 IUs | $1,000 | $1,400 | | 20,000 IUs | $3,500 | $4,900 |

Clicking a bundle's Buy bundle → link opens Stripe Checkout; the button reads "Opening checkout…" while the session is being created. A purchased bundle lands in your prepaid balance and does not expire for 12 months, it stays available even after your monthly included allotment resets.

Recurring monthly

Labeled "Deepest per-IU discount. Cancel any month," the same four sizes are offered as a standing monthly subscription instead of a one-time purchase:

| Recurring | USD/mo | CAD/mo | |---|---|---| | 250 IUs / month | $55 | $75 | | 1,000 IUs / month | $200 | $280 | | 5,000 IUs / month | $850 | $1,190 | | 20,000 IUs / month | $3,000 | $4,200 |

This is the cheapest per-IU rate on the page, cheaper than the matching one-time bundle, because you're committing to it every month. Clicking Subscribe → opens Stripe Checkout the same way bundle purchases do.

Pay-as-you-go rate

If you're an Executive, Premier, or Reserve Member, a line under the two grids shows your tier's pay-as-you-go rate: $0.40 USD ($0.55 CAD) per IU on Executive, $0.30 ($0.42 CAD) on Premier, $0.20 ($0.30 CAD) on Reserve. The page is explicit that this rate only ever triggers if you've turned on auto-top-up below and your balance crosses the threshold you set, you are never billed PAYG just for holding an active membership.

If a checkout attempt fails to start, an error message appears in red beneath this section rather than silently doing nothing.

Auto-top-up

Underneath the purchase grids, the Auto-top-up section is off by default and opt-in only. Its description: "Off by default. Opt-in only. When your balance drops below the threshold you set, we charge your saved card for the amount you choose. We email you 24 hours before any charge fires." A single toggle button on the right reads Turn on (copper) when it's off, or Turn off (red) once it's active, and shows "Saving…" while your change is being written.

Two fields control the behavior, both editable only while auto-top-up is turned on:

• Trigger when balance drops below, in IUs, defaulting to 50.
• Charge amount per top-up, in dollars, defaulting to $50. Beside this field, the page previews roughly how many IUs that charge would buy at your tier's PAYG rate ("≈ N IUs at [tier] rate"), so you can see the trade before committing.

A Save settings button writes your threshold and charge amount; it's disabled unless auto-top-up is on. Errors from a failed save appear in red beside the button.

Directly below, a permanent note reads: "A 250-IU one-time bundle is consistently a better deal than auto-top-up. The bundle's per-IU price is about 30 to 50% lower than your tier's PAYG rate. Most operators see this once and switch." Verinode is telling you, plainly, that auto-top-up is a convenience, not the cheapest way to buy IUs.

1. 1Decide your comfort threshold, the balance at which you'd rather Verinode charge your card than risk AI work pausing mid-week.
2. 2Set Trigger when balance drops below to that number of IUs.
3. 3Set Charge amount per top-up to the dollar amount you want charged each time the trigger fires, watch the projected IU count update as you type.
4. 4Click Turn on, then Save settings if you adjust the numbers afterward.
5. 5Watch for the email Verinode sends 24 hours before any charge actually fires, so you can top up manually instead if you'd rather.

Current recurring subscription

If you already have an active recurring monthly subscription, a Current recurring subscription section appears, showing the IU count and monthly price you're subscribed to (for example, "1,000 Intelligence Units / month at $200.00 / month"). Underneath, the page states: "Cancel any month from this page or via the Stripe customer portal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing cycle; any IUs already credited remain in your balance." This section is omitted entirely if you don't have an active recurring subscription.

Need the math?

The page closes with a Need the math? section: "Per-operation IU costs and the pre-purchase calculator are on the public methodology page." An Open methodology → link takes you to /methodology, where every AI action's IU cost is listed and you can estimate what a month of real usage would cost before you commit to a bundle or recurring plan.

How Intelligence Units power AI work

IUs are not a generic usage meter, they are Verinode's way of pricing decision-grade AI work honestly instead of hiding it in a flat subscription that either underprices heavy users or overprices light ones. Every included allotment is sized around real decision volume: at roughly 30 IUs per standard decision, an Executive's monthly allotment covers dozens of decisions, a Premier's covers a few hundred, and Reserve's covers the most before you'd ever touch a PAYG or bundle purchase.

What actually spends IUs: acting on a decision in the decision workspace, asking your Co-COO to draft or revise a plan, running the cross-section orchestrator across sections, and generating a survey. Reading your data, viewing benchmarks, and receiving signals in the Feed never cost anything, the meter only moves when you ask the AI to do work. See acting on decisions for what a spend actually looks like from the decision side, and understanding your margin for how those decisions tie back to what you keep.

When your total balance reaches zero, operator-initiated AI work pauses, new work you request queues rather than failing outright, until you add IUs or your next monthly allotment lands. Your own data connections, uploads, and autonomous signals are unaffected; see connecting your data for what keeps flowing regardless of balance.

Best-practice example

Say you're a Premier Member partway through the month and the balance summary shows "This month: 4,800 of 6,000 included used (80%)," the progress bar has just turned copper. You have a stack of decisions queued in the workspace you want your Co-COO to act on before month end. Rather than wait for the reset, you buy a 1,000 IU one-time bundle for $230, cheaper per IU than triggering auto-top-up would be, and it lands in your prepaid balance immediately, on top of what's left of your included allotment. You leave auto-top-up off, since a single manual top-up covers what you need for the rest of the month.

Data sources