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Billing in Paige is managed at the project level. Each project has its own subscription plan, and AI usage — such as the AI agent writing and modifying your bot code — is charged against a credits balance. Payments are processed securely through Paystack.

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Free trial

Every new project starts on a 14-day free trial with full access to every paid feature — the Conversations tab, Broadcasts, the Deploy button, and bot runtime on your connected WhatsApp number. You can build, deploy, and run your bot end-to-end during the trial without entering payment details. When the trial ends and you have not subscribed:
  • Locked. The Conversations tab, Broadcasts tab, Deploy button, and bot runtime are gated until you subscribe. Inbound WhatsApp messages on your connected number are received but the bot will not reply.
  • Still open. The Bot tab, the AI chat sidebar, every Settings section (including WhatsApp), the in-app preview, and the Paige Dev testing number remain available — so you can keep iterating and connect or re-configure your WhatsApp number whenever you’re ready.
Subscribe for R570/month from Settings → Billing to lift the gate immediately. Your bot resumes responding on your real WhatsApp number from the moment your subscription becomes active.
You can connect your WhatsApp Business number through Meta embedded signup at any point — during the trial, after the trial expires, or after you subscribe. The connection itself is never gated.

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The subscription

There’s one plan: R570 a month, per project. No tiers to choose between. If you run several projects, each one has its own subscription. Subscribe from Settings → Billing — click Subscribe — R570/mo and pay through Paystack. Paige keeps your card on file and charges it again every 30 days.
Update card also charges R570. It isn’t a small verification charge — updating your card runs a full payment, which also settles anything overdue in the same transaction. Use it when your card has genuinely changed, not to check the details are right.
Billing is visible to owners and admins only, and doesn’t apply to self-hosted projects — those run on your own infrastructure, so there’s no platform fee. Self-hosted projects still buy credits, because they still use Paige’s AI agents.

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Two different things you pay for

This trips people up, so it’s worth separating clearly. Your subscription and your credits are unrelated, and they buy different things. So a project with a subscription and no credits has a bot that runs perfectly and an AI you can’t ask to change it. A project with credits and no subscription is one you can keep building on, but whose bot has stopped talking to customers.

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AI credits

Credits pay for the AI agents inside Paige — the Code agent that builds your bot, the Conversations agent that helps you reply, the Broadcasting agent that plans campaigns. The more work you ask of them, the more they use. Every new project gets 5 free credits to start with. Your balance, a breakdown of which agent spent what, and your full history are in Settings → Usage.
The Help Agent is free and always will be. It doesn’t touch your balance, and it keeps working when you’ve run out — so you’re never locked out of asking for help.
Not sure which agents cost credits and which don’t? The AI agents overview has the full free-versus-billed breakdown, and explains why the AI running inside your deployed bot never shows up here.
Credits don’t pay for your bot talking to customers, deploys, or WhatsApp’s own message costs. Those come from your subscription and from Meta respectively.

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Buy credits

Go to Settings → Usage and click Buy Credits on the Credit Balance card. Pick 5, 10, 20, or 50 — or enter your own amount up to 500. Credits cost R19 each and land as soon as the payment clears.
Set a Low Credit Alert on the same page and Paige emails you before you run out, rather than you finding out mid-sentence.

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Low-credit warning and zero-balance gating

Paige warns you in-app well before your credits run out, and stops new AI requests cleanly when your balance hits zero.
  • Low-credit warning. Once your balance drops below one credit, a persistent banner appears above the chat input with a Top up button. Clicking it switches you straight to Settings → Usage so you can buy more without losing your place in the chat.
  • Zero-balance gate. When your balance reaches zero, the Code and Conversations agents stop accepting new requests. A request that is already streaming is allowed to finish — only the next one is blocked.
  • Help Agent still works. The Help Agent is always free and bypasses the credit balance, so you can still ask Paige for help even when credits are out.
The banner balance is refreshed after every message and after every top-up, so as soon as your credits land the chat unblocks automatically.

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Pause, resume, and cancel

You can change the state of your subscription at any time from the Billing section.
Pausing your subscription temporarily suspends your project. Your bot stops handling messages, but your code and data are preserved. Click Pause subscription in the Billing section to pause.
A paused project cannot receive or respond to WhatsApp messages until you resume.

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Update your payment method

1

Go to Billing

Open the project and click Billing in the sidebar.
2

Click Update payment method

Click Update payment method. You’ll be redirected to Paystack to enter your new card details.
3

Save and confirm

Complete the update in Paystack. Your new payment method will be used for all future charges on this project.

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Payment history

Scroll to the bottom of Settings → Billing and you’ll find Payment History — every charge on the project, with the date, what it was for (a subscription renewal or a credit purchase), the amount in rand, and whether it went through.
The section only appears once you’ve actually paid for something. On a project still in its trial there’s nothing there — not an empty table, but no heading at all. That’s expected rather than a fault.
Payment history is per project, so check each project’s Billing section separately.
If a payment fails, your project may be paused automatically. Update your payment method and reactivate your subscription from the Billing section to restore your bot.