Free reserve and owner cap
Public chatbots need cost control. Any bot can generate many answers from curious users, bots, or testers. That is why Zeptix separates free usage, the owner cap, training credits, and purchased end-user credits.
This separation makes operations more predictable: free usage stays limited, paid end-user usage is covered separately, and training stays traceable as a build-up phase.
TL;DR — the four cost areas
| Area | Purpose | Risk without a limit |
|---|---|---|
| Owner cap | Your plan's monthly budget | Public usage drains your budget |
| Free reserve | Controlled free answers | Abuse through free requests |
| Training credits | Builder/training/optimization | The build-up phase becomes unclearly expensive |
| End-user credits | Paid visitor usage | Should be covered separately |
Owner cap
The owner cap is the plan-related monthly budget. Starter includes 5,000 credits, Pro 15,000 credits, and Business 50,000 credits per month at the Early-Bird status of May 2026. This cap protects against unlimited costs.
The owner cap is not intended to carry every bit of public free usage without a limit. Anyone running a public bot should deliberately limit free usage.
Free reserve
The free reserve is the area for free visitor answers. A free reserve makes sense for demos, onboarding, and first questions. But it must not be so large that individual users or scripts exploit the bot for free without limit.
Good free rules are simple: few free answers, a clear message when they end, a visible purchase or login hint, and no hidden continuation at the owner's expense.
Training credits
Training credits belong to the build-up and optimization phase. The builder, training bot, and website indexing can cause costs before your chatbot earns productively. These costs must stay separately traceable so that operators can see what was build-up and what was live operation.
For new accounts, starter credits are helpful, but they are not an unlimited public builder surface. When credits are used up, the bot must block or lead to a top-up.
End-user credits
Purchased end-user credits cover additional usage in a specific bot. They should not drain the owner cap and should not be confused with the free reserve.