When IUs run out: pause and upgrade prompts

What "running out" means

Intelligence Units (IU) are what fund IQ's work for you: reviewing your data, drafting a plan, running a decision, replying in chat. Reading your own data, browsing every section, and receiving autonomous signals never spend anything. Only work you ask IQ to do by name does.

Your balance is one number made up of several buckets added together: whatever is left of this month's included allotment (for a paid membership), any bonus IU you have banked, active recurring-subscription credits, and one-time bundles you have bought. When that total reaches zero, IQ pauses operator-initiated work, the tasks you ask for by name, until you add capacity or your next monthly allotment lands. This article covers the three places that moment actually shows up on screen: the calm heads-up before you run out, the paused notice once you hit zero, the notice inside IQ's chat panel, and the paywall that can appear before you spend at all. For the balance page itself and how to add IU, see Account & Billing: Intelligence Units.

The exact behavior differs by tier:

• Contributor (free): a one-time starter allocation, plus whatever you have earned through free starter IU. There is no monthly refresh. Once it is spent, IQ stays paused until you become a Member (or bank more free IU inside your activation window).
• Executive, Premier, Reserve (paid Memberships): a monthly included allotment that resets every billing cycle, on top of any prepaid bundles or an active recurring subscription. Running out mid-month just means waiting for the reset, or adding capacity now.

The calm approaching-capacity notice

Before you actually run out, paid Members get a quiet, non-blocking heads-up. It is a small mini-player card that appears in the bottom-right corner of the screen (bottom-center, above the tab bar, on mobile), the same kind of surface that lands after a document upload. It arrives collapsed, one line, and expands if you tap it; leave it alone and it dismisses itself after about 30 seconds.

It fires once, the first time your balance crosses 80% of this month's included allotment, and not again until the next billing cycle. The card reads, in small caps beside a copper-tinted icon, "Review · Intelligence Capacity," with the headline "Most of this month's capacity is used" and the detail "About [N] Intelligence Units left. Nothing to do right now, I'll let you know if it runs out." A single View usage button opens your Settings' Membership section, where your balance and ledger live. There is nothing urgent to act on here; it is a heads-up, not a request.

This notice does not show for Contributors (they get the starter-IU tracker and the point-of-action paywall covered below instead), and it is suppressed entirely on your very first visit to the Feed right after onboarding, so it never competes with the welcome tour.

The paused notice, once your balance hits zero

The moment your total balance reaches zero, the same mini-player surfaces a second, more serious state, also once per billing cycle. The small-caps label switches to "Failed · Intelligence Capacity" in Ember Red, with the headline "Your AI is paused for the month." The detail line depends on whether you have anything waiting:

• If you have decisions sitting in the workspace: "[N] decision(s) waiting on you. Add capacity to pick them back up, or wait for the monthly reset."
• If you do not: "Operator-initiated work is on hold. Your briefings, scans, and alerts keep running."

Two buttons sit at the bottom: Add capacity, which takes you straight to /account/billing to buy a bundle, subscribe to a recurring add-on, or check your pay-as-you-go rate, and View usage, which opens Settings' Membership section to review what happened. Like the approaching-capacity card, this is Members-only; Contributors who run out get an upsell email plus the point-of-action paywall described below rather than this card.

The exhausted notice inside IQ's chat panel

If your balance is genuinely empty when you actually try to send a message to IQ (any tier, Contributor or Member), the input box at the bottom of the chat panel is replaced by a notice card rather than letting the send fail silently. It carries the small-caps eyebrow "Membership" in copper, the headline "You've used this period's intelligence," and, when your balance is known, the line "Your Intelligence Unit balance is [N] IU." underneath.

What follows depends on whether you have a refresh date:

• If you are on a paid membership with a known monthly reset: "Your next allotment lands [date]. Top up below, or wait until then."
• If you are a Contributor with no monthly refresh: "Top up below to keep going, or come back next billing period."

If you are a Contributor still inside your first 90 days on the platform, a green block appears above the buttons: "Earn more for free →" with "Upload documents and finish setup to bank bonus Intelligence Units. Free IU extends your IQ runway before any paid membership." Tapping it takes you to Connect. See Earning free starter Intelligence Units for the full mechanics of that bonus.

Below that sit one or two buttons: Become a member always appears, opening the membership pricing overlay pre-highlighted on Executive. A second button, Wait until [date], only appears when there is a refresh date to wait for, it dismisses the notice so you can keep reading the rest of the panel without it blocking your view. Contributors, who have no refresh date, only see the one button.

The membership overlay: the paywall before you spend

Separately from the notice above, which only appears once a real request has actually hit zero, Verinode also checks your balance before certain actions run: sending your first message in a new IQ chat thread, and running an Act plan on a decision. That check behaves differently by tier:

• Contributors are gated every time: if your balance can cover the action's estimated cost, you see a quick confirm step first (a small modal titled "Run this?" that spells out roughly how many decisions or conversations the action uses, what you have, and what would be left, then a single button to proceed). If your balance cannot cover it, you see the full membership overlay described below instead.
• Paid Members are never gated this way, your spend runs silently in the background every time. If you are ever genuinely out of capacity when an action actually runs, that surfaces as the in-panel exhausted notice above, not a pre-send prompt.

The Contributor paywall

This is the overlay you will actually encounter as a Contributor once your balance cannot cover an action. It opens as a modal titled "Membership," with the headline "You've used up your trial capacity." and, underneath: "Becoming a Member keeps your AI working. Drafting plans, comparing your numbers to the network, shaping decisions with you. Your data stays yours; we analyze it for you."

If you are still inside your first 90 days, the same green "Or earn more for free →" block appears here too, with the line "Finish setup and feed documents to your sections to earn bonus Intelligence Units. They extend how long IQ keeps working for you before you ever need a paid membership."

Below that, two tier cards sit side by side:

| | Executive Member | Premier Member | |---|---|---| | Price | $4,200/yr (USD) | $7,200/yr (USD) | | Pitch | "IQ works your priorities. The decisions that matter most each week, across your whole platform." | "IQ works your whole business. Insight across every part of your operation, not just the priorities." | | Leads with | ~50 decisions/mo (1,500 IU, then $0.40/IU), national peer benchmarks, Verinode Score on every vendor/equipment/carrier, Operator Health Score and decision tracking, 1 operator | ~200 decisions/mo (6,000 IU, then $0.30/IU), regional and specialty cohort filtering, 12+ months of trend history, 2 advisor hours/yr, quarterly research call, up to 5 operators | | Footer spec | 1,500 IU/mo · 1 operator · unlimited data contributors · annual | 6,000 IU/mo · up to 5 operators · unlimited data contributors · annual | | Button | Become an Executive Member | Become a Premier Member |

Prices and the per-IU rate shown re-localize automatically to CAD if that is your account's billing currency. Under the cards, a "Read the trust contract" link opens Verinode's data-use policy. A Not now button in the footer closes the overlay without buying anything. For the full tier grid, the 14-day Executive preview, and how checkout and in-app upgrades work, see Membership tiers and upgrading.

The Member layout

The same overlay component has a second layout, built for the moment a paid membership's own balance cannot cover an action, buying more capacity right there rather than being pointed at a new tier. It opens as a smaller modal titled "Top up," with the headline "You've used all your capacity this period." and, when a refresh date is known: "Your monthly allotment refreshes [date]. To keep going now:"

Two rows follow, buying capacity outright:

| Amount | Price (USD) | Note | |---|---|---| | 1,000 IU one-time | $230 | | | 5,000 IU one-time | $1,000 | best per-IU rate |

If you are on Executive, a copper-bordered panel below the rows reads: "Premier members pay $0.30/IU vs $0.40 on Executive.", and, when your recent usage is known, "At your last 30 days of usage, you'd save ~$[N]/yr on Premier." followed by "Premier works your whole business, not just your priorities." with a "See what Premier includes →" link. This nudge is Executive-only, Premier and Reserve members do not see it (Premier is already past the point that comparison would be useful, and Reserve's rate is lower still). The footer button reads Wait until [date] if a refresh date is known, or simply Close if not.

Adding capacity once you are paused

Whichever surface you saw, every path leads to the same two places:

1. 1Add capacity now. Either Add capacity from the paused notice, Become a member from the in-panel notice, or a tier/top-up button from the overlay, all end at the same purchasing surfaces: buy a one-time bundle or subscribe to recurring IU at Account & Billing: Intelligence Units, or use the fast top-up modal if you already have a card on file and just need a quick 1,000 IU. Becoming a Member for the first time goes through the membership tiers modal instead.
2. 2Or wait it out. If you are on a paid membership, dismiss the notice with Wait until [date], your full allotment lands automatically at the next billing cycle, no action needed.
3. 3Or, if you are a Contributor inside your first 90 days, earn instead of buying. Finish your setup steps and feed documents into the sections you use; see Earning free starter Intelligence Units for exactly how much each milestone banks.

Best-practice example

Say you are an Executive Member partway through the month. The bottom-right mini-player quietly shows "Review · Intelligence Capacity, Most of this month's capacity is used, about 220 Intelligence Units left" one afternoon, you note it and keep working, there is nothing to act on yet. A week later your balance actually reaches zero mid-decision: the same corner now shows "Failed · Intelligence Capacity, Your AI is paused for the month, 3 decisions waiting on you." You click Add capacity, land on the Billing page, and buy the 1,000 IU one-time bundle for $230 rather than waiting nine days for the reset, since three decisions need action this week. Your balance updates within moments and the queued decisions are ready to run again.

For a Contributor, the shape is a little different: their starter allocation runs out mid-chat, so the very next message they try to send opens the Contributor paywall directly, "You've used up your trial capacity," with Executive and Premier side by side. Since they are still inside their 90-day window, they close the overlay, forward a few outstanding vendor invoices to bank free bonus IU instead, and come back to finish the conversation once that lands.

Data sources