Buying Intelligence Units

What this page is

Buy Intelligence Units is the dedicated screen for adding IU capacity beyond whatever your membership already includes. Intelligence Units are the fuel behind every piece of real work IQ does for you: drafting a plan on a decision, running the cross-section orchestrator, generating a survey, analyzing a document you've forwarded in. Reading your own data and receiving signals never costs anything; only work you ask IQ to do by name spends IU. This page exists for the moment your balance is getting thin (or you know a busy week is coming) and you want more capacity without digging through your full billing settings.

Verinode never decides how much capacity you need or auto-charges you for it. This page and the buying screen behind it lay out the options plainly, in plain dollars and plain outcomes, and you choose.

Where to find it

Open Settings from the sidebar, then Membership. The main Membership page shows a Capacity quick-buy strip inline for paid Members, but the full dedicated view lives at its own address: /settings/membership/credits, with the page title "Buy Intelligence Units." It sits alongside the Memberships view (/settings/membership/plans, "Compare & Manage") as the second of the two focused drill-ins under Membership: one view compares and switches tiers, this one adds raw IU capacity.

What's on the page

The page itself is short and single-purpose. Under the heading "Add Capacity," a caption reads:

AI actions pause at zero balance. We never auto-charge unless you explicitly turn auto-top-up on.

Below that, one line of body copy: "Add capacity beyond your monthly tier allowance: one-time bundles, a recurring monthly subscription, or opt-in auto-top-up." Two buttons follow:

• Add Intelligence Units (primary): opens the Top up Intelligence Units window described below. This is the same window that opens from the quick-buy strip on the main Membership page, the IU balance chip's spend log, and any low-balance prompt elsewhere in the app. It's one shared buying surface, not a separate checkout per entry point.
• See per-operation IU costs (secondary): routes to Methodology, where the "Published IU costs by operation" table lists the exact IU cost of every operation IQ can run, so nothing about what a decision, a deep dive, or a chat turn actually costs is hidden behind a black box.

Auto-top-up itself (the opt-in "charge my card automatically when I drop below a threshold" mechanism referenced in the caption) is configured on a different page, Account Billing (/account/billing), covered in Account & Billing: Intelligence Units. This page only sends you there via context; it doesn't hold the toggle itself.

The Top up Intelligence Units window

Tapping Add Intelligence Units opens a window titled "Top up Intelligence Units." It has four states depending on what happens after you tap Buy.

1. Select a bundle

At the top, a line of context personalizes the ask using your actual balance when it's known: "You have [N] IU, about [N] decisions or [N] conversations. Add more to keep IQ working." If your balance hasn't loaded yet, it falls back to a plain "Add Intelligence Units to keep IQ working." A USD / CAD toggle sits beside it; switching currency re-prices everything on the window instantly, it doesn't change what you're actually billed in later (that's fixed at checkout).

Below that, a One-time / Monthly toggle picks the cadence, and a row of four size tiles lets you pick how much:

| Size | One-time (USD) | One-time (CAD) | Monthly (USD) | Monthly (CAD) | |---|---|---|---|---| | 250 IU | $65 | $90 | $55/mo | $75/mo | | 1,000 IU | $230 | $320 | $200/mo | $280/mo | | 5,000 IU | $1,000 | $1,400 | $850/mo | $1,190/mo | | 20,000 IU | $3,500 | $4,900 | $3,000/mo | $4,200/mo |

Each tile shows the raw IU count, then an exchange-rate translation underneath: "≈ [N] decisions, or [N] conversations." These are the same two outcome anchors used everywhere else IU shows up in Verinode: a decision is a standard worked decision at 30 IU, a conversation is one chat turn with IQ at 3 IU. The "or" phrasing is deliberate: 1,000 IU buys about 33 decisions or about 333 conversations, not both at once, since a real month is usually a mix of the two. The tile you've selected is highlighted; the footer button updates live to read either Buy [N] IU · $[price] (one-time) or Subscribe · $[price]/mo (monthly).

Notice the recurring monthly price is always lower than the matching one-time bundle at the same size, roughly 10-15% cheaper per IU. That's the trade: monthly commits you to a standing charge every month until you cancel it; one-time is a single purchase with no further commitment.

2. Charging

If your account already has a card on file (saved the first time you subscribed to a membership, or the first time you topped up), tapping Buy for a one-time purchase charges that card immediately, off-session, no redirect. The window shows "Charging your card on file… This takes a second" while it processes. Most banks clear this instantly; if yours requires extra verification (3-D Secure / Strong Customer Authentication), Verinode automatically prompts you to confirm it in place before finishing the charge.

3. Card capture (first purchase, or any monthly subscription)

If you have no card on file yet, or you picked the Monthly cadence (recurring subscriptions always go through this step), the window switches to an embedded card form instead of charging instantly: "Add a card to complete your top-up. We save it so next time is one tap" for a one-time purchase, or "Set up your monthly Intelligence Units" for a subscription. This is a standard embedded Stripe checkout right inside the window, no separate tab. Once you complete it, your card is saved, and every top-up after this one is instant.

4. Success or error

On success, the window shows a checkmark and either "[N] IU added" (one-time) or "Monthly Intelligence Units are on" (subscription), with "Your balance updates in a moment" underneath, since the credit itself lands a moment later via webhook rather than instantly. Tap Back to IQ to close. If a decision or spend screen was waiting on the balance, it catches up within a few seconds.

If the charge fails for any reason, the window instead reads "That didn't go through," followed by the specific error message when one is available, or a generic "Please try again." prompt, plus a note that you can reach support@verinode.ai. Close dismisses the window as-is; Try again returns you to the size-picker without losing your currency or cadence selection.

What happens to the IU you buy

A one-time bundle lands in a separate prepaid balance and stays usable for 12 months, it doesn't reset or get overwritten the next time your monthly included allotment refreshes (if you have one). A recurring monthly subscription instead adds its IU on the same cadence every month until you cancel it, which you do from Account Billing, not from this page. Either way, the IU is fully spendable the moment it lands: standard decisions, deep dives, and chat turns all draw from the same combined balance, whichever bucket has IU in it.

Empty and edge states

• Balance not yet loaded. The window's opening line falls back to the generic "Add Intelligence Units to keep IQ working" instead of quoting a number it doesn't have yet.
• No card on file. The Buy button doesn't fail silently, it routes straight into the embedded card-capture step described above.
• Payment declined or requires unsupported verification. The error state names the problem when Stripe returns one; otherwise it shows the generic retry message with the support email.
• Checkout abandoned. Closing the window at any point (Cancel, the window's close control, or navigating away) simply discards the in-progress purchase. Nothing is charged and nothing partially applies.

Related articles

• Membership and billing
• Account & Billing: Intelligence Units
• Membership tiers and upgrading
• Understanding your margin

Data sources