Balance, Credits, and the AI Usage Record: What a Generation Costs

AI previews on Labelix are optional. Craft effects, virtual try-on, and showcase video help you review a design earlier, but none of them are required to submit a Custom Request or receive a quote.

Because they are optional, they are also priced individually. That makes the question worth answering directly: what does a generation cost, what pays for it, and where can you see what you already spent?

What can pay for a generation?

Two things: promotional credits, and your wallet balance.

• Promotional credits are granted by the platform, separately for image generation and video generation. They are consumed first when available.
• Wallet balance is the cash balance in your account, used when no matching credits remain.

The two are tracked separately because they behave differently. Credits are granted for a purpose and cannot be moved between image and video. Balance is general.

Your current balance and remaining credits are shown together at My Balance, alongside the current price of an image and a video generation.

Check the price before you start a generation

The cost of an optional AI action is shown before the action begins, not after it completes.

That ordering matters more than it sounds. Preview generation is not free retries—each attempt is a separate generation with its own cost. Reading the displayed price first turns "let me try a few and see" into a decision you actually made.

What the two history views tell you

Your balance page keeps two different records, and they answer different questions.

1. The activity record lists every generation and adjustment: which unit was consumed, whether it was a debit or credit, the balance afterwards, and—where one exists—the asset that generation produced.
2. The top-up record lists money added to the wallet, with the transaction amount and currency it was paid in.

If you are asking "where did my credits go", read the activity record. If you are asking "what did I pay and when", read the top-up record. Mixing the two is the usual source of confusion.

Why a generation you dislike still counts

A generation consumes its cost when the work is performed, not when you approve the result.

This is the same economics as a physical sample: the factory's time is spent whether or not you like what comes back. The practical response is not to expect free retries, but to reduce the number of retries you need—start from a clean source design, compose the garment surface properly, and know which question you are asking before you generate.

Most wasted generations come from generating first and deciding what to look for afterwards.

Budget previews the way you budget samples

Give the review a number before you start. A reasonable pattern for one design:

• One craft effect per decoration method you are seriously comparing—not one per method that exists.
• One try-on per placement you cannot judge from the composed surface alone.
• Video only when motion answers a question a still image cannot.

If you cannot say what a generation would tell you, it will not tell you anything.

What a top-up does not change

Adding balance does not change what AI output can promise. A generated image communicates intent; it does not certify thread density, ink behavior, production color, or fit.

Those facts still come from the quote, the specification, and—when the product justifies it—a physical sample. Budget for previews as a design-review tool, and keep the production questions where they belong.