Account
Credits and billing
You should know exactly what you are paying for and exactly what happens when you stop. Datadef meters one thing: AI generation, counted in credits you buy once and that never expire. Everything else is included with every account, permanently, and an empty balance takes nothing away from you. Current prices are on the pricing page.
How it works
- 1Create an account. It comes with 1 credit, given once, and there is nothing to activate, renew, or cancel.
- 2Use the product. Cloud projects, version history, sharing, public links, embeds, image export, folders, repository sync, and the MCP server cost no credits at all.
- 3Spend credits when the AI runs: 1 for a diagram from a prompt, 2 for an AI edit. The full table is below.
- 4Buy more on the credits page when you want to. Everything you already made stays open in the meantime.
What a credit is
A credit is one unit of AI work. It is spent when a model runs for you, and at no other time. Opening a project, editing it by hand, publishing a share link, exporting a PNG, or embedding a diagram in a README never touches your balance.
- Credits never expire. They do not reset monthly and they are not attached to a subscription. A balance bought today is still there next year.
- Every account starts with 1 credit. The grant is once per email address, ever; plus-aliases and Gmail dot variants count as the same address. It is enough to generate one real diagram and judge the output before buying any.
- Nothing else is metered. There is no per-project limit, no seat count, and no feature that a purchase switches on.
The free way to try Datadef without an account at all is the scratch canvas: 1 AI generation a day, stored in your browser, no credits involved.
What each action costs
| Action | Credits |
|---|---|
| A diagram generated from a prompt | 1 |
| A detailed generation, the deeper pass with fields, schedules, and owners | 3 |
| An AI edit, one turn of the editing agent on the canvas or over MCP | 2 |
| A data import, turning a spreadsheet or dataset into a canvas | 1 |
| A repository sync that actually regenerated the diagram | 2 |
| A repository sync where the branch had not moved | Nothing |
The price is the same wherever the work starts: the dashboard prompt bar, the AI panel on the canvas, or an agent calling MCP tools.
Work that did not happen is refunded
If a generation fails, or an AI edit finishes without changing anything, the credits go back automatically. The refund is its own line in the statement on the credits page, next to what was spent and the balance after it, so a balance that looks wrong can always be read back to what actually ran.
The unchanged-repository rule is worth stating twice: every repository sync resolves the head commit first, and if it matches the last one synced, nothing is generated and nothing is charged. A connection watching a quiet branch costs nothing to keep, however often the daily sweep looks at it.
When the balance reaches zero
Running out locks nothing
An empty balance pauses one thing: new AI generation. Every project stays open and editable by hand, every saved version stays readable, exports keep rendering, public links and embeds keep serving, and your repository connections keep the diagrams they already produced. There is nothing to restore, because nothing was taken away.
The precise consequences:
- Editing on the canvas by hand, adding nodes, renaming, relaying out: unaffected.
- PNG and JPEG export, public links, embeds, version history, folders, and creating new empty projects: unaffected.
- Collaborators are unaffected too. What someone may do on a project comes from their role, never from their balance. See Sharing and permissions.
- A repository sync that finds the branch unmoved keeps running for free. One that would regenerate the diagram stops and says so, leaving the previous diagram untouched, and resumes on the next sync after a top-up.
- Generating, importing, and AI edits ask you to add credits, and the request is refused rather than queued.
Buying credits
Credits are bought on the credits page, and the current rates are on the pricing page. A slider picks the size of the purchase; the price per credit falls as the amount rises, and both the unit price and the total are shown before checkout. It is a one-off payment: nothing renews, nothing needs cancelling, and what you bought does not expire.
The same page carries your balance and your statement: every purchase, every generation, every refund, each with the balance it left behind.
The team workspace subscription
One subscription exists, and it is the only one. A team workspace is billed monthly and carries up to 5 seats, restricted folders, and a shared monthly pool of credits that members draw from instead of their own balance. See Teams and folders.
It is for shared ownership and a shared budget, not for access: every member already has every feature on their own account, and keeps their personal workspace and their own credits alongside the team.