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The following guidance is intended for self-service users using Contextual AI in On-Demand mode. Users on provisioned throughput plans should direct any billing questions to their account managers.

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Usage Modes

Contextual AI supports two usage modes:
ModeDescriptionGood For
On-Demand

Get started immediately by creating a Contextual AI Workspace. New workspaces receive $25 in free credits.

Get an additional $25 for signing up with a work email, and $5 for watching the introductory video.
  • Pay-as-you-go with no commitments or minimums
  • Purchase credits upfront, which are then drawn-down based on your usage, according to the pricing below
  • Easily upgrade to provisioned throughput as your needs evolve
  • Experimenting with, or evaluating, the platform
  • Scaling usage and costs up or down quickly
  • Users that don’t require SLAs or QPS guarantees
Provisioned Throughput

Contact sales@contextual.ai or your account team.
  • Purchase model units (MUs) to reserve guaranteed capacity and predictable throughput
  • Meeting guaranteed and predictable QPS levels to satisfy expected production volumes
  • Users that require service level agreements (SLAs) to meet production standards

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Services

You can also purchase expert support services for fixed terms, regardless of usage mode. With a service package, you get dedicated support from our Sales Engineering and Customer Machine Learning Engineering team to optimize performance and design full solutions.
Contact sales@contextual.ai or your account manager for more information.

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On-Demand Pricing

In On-Demand mode, all Contextual AI usage—whether through the UI or APIs—is billed as follows:

Query

  • query is the endpoint called when you interact with an Agent. It invokes a multi-step RAG pipeline, and the cost of a given query is the sum of the costs for each step in the pipeline.
These steps can be configured via Agent Settings.
The average cost per query is ~$0.05.
STEPPRICE
Query Optimization
Reformulation and decomposition.		$1/1M toks
Encode
Encode the user query for search.		$0.03/1M toks
Rerank
Rerank the retrieved chunks.		$0.12/1M toks
Filter
Filter chunks prior to generation.		$1/1M toks
Generate
Final response generation.		Input: $3/1M toks
Output: $15/1M toks
Groundedness & Safety
Post-generation groundedness checks.		$1/1M toks
API Reference: Agent Creation and Query

Component APIs

Component APIs allow you to leverage key capabilities and models in a modular way.
COMPONENTPRICE
Parse
Parse unstructured documents into markdown and/or JSON.		Basic: $3/1K pgs
Standard: $40/1K pgs
Parse API Docs
 
Rerank
Rerank based on natural language instructions.		$0.12/1M toks
Rerank API Docs
 
Generate
Generate using the most grounded language model in the world.		Input: $3/1M toks
Output: $15/1M toks
Generate API Docs
 
LMUnit
Evaluate LLM output using natural language unit tests.		$3/1M toks
LMUnit API Docs
 

Ingestion

Documents added to Datastores are sent through our ingestion pipeline where they are parsed, chunked, and indexed in a vector store.
STEPPRICE
Ingest$48.50/1K pages
API Reference: Ingest
Pricing is subject to change. This pricing sheet reflects the latest information as of July 2025.

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Viewing Usage Stats & Adding Credit

You can view your usage statistics and add more credits directly from the Contextual AI UI.

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Monitoring Usage & Spend

To see your usage stats:
  1. Click on Usage in the sidebar.
The usage page shows a month-by-month breakdown of your usage and spend across the various charged components and endpoints.

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Adding & Managing Payment Methods

In order to top-up credits, you must have a valid payment method linked to your Contextual AI workspace. To link a payment method:
  1. Navigate to the Billing page in your workspace
  2. Click on Payment Methods in the Learn More section
  3. Click the +New button in the upper right of the page
  4. Fill out the card or bank information in the form, then click Next
  5. Fill out your billing address, then click Save Payment Method
To remove an existing stored payment method:
  1. Locate it in the list of payment methods
  2. Click the menu icon
  3. Click Remove Payment Method

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Credit Top-Up

To continue using Contextual AI once your credits are depleted, you must add credits to your account. To top-up your credits:
  1. Navigate to the Billing page in your workspace
  2. Add a valid credit card under Payment Methods, if you havent already
  3. Click Add Credits and fill out the corresponding form
  4. Click Next and confirm the payment