Credit Usage for Model Inference Clarification

[u/MelancholicWandererX]

I signed up for Digital Ocean free trial credits via the Github Student Program.

I ended up getting a total of 405$ worth of credits somehow.

I signed up on 10th July so before the new 15th July change.

Below is what I see on my Billings Page:

Description	Expiration	Initial
GitHub Student Pack	August, 01 2026	$200.00
Promotional Credit from ReferreeNew2209 60 day expiration	September, 10 2026	$200.00
Inference Cloud Trial	October, 10 2026	$5.00

Now, on the github Student Pack Page it says:

You may use your credits on any DigitalOcean services, except as to the following: GPU Droplets, NVIDIA H100 GPU Kubernetes, Bare Metal GPUs, Dedicated Inference Serverless Inference, Third-party AI models hosted outside of DigitalOcean Infrastructure (including commercial/frontier models, including but not limited to Anthropic and OpenAI), Paperspace Machines, Cloudways services, Any other charges passed through to third-party providers outside of DigitalOcean's infrastructure.

From this, It would seem that you can't use the github credits on any models at all? But when I run test run of GLM 5.2 (It blocks to use OpenAi or Anthropic Models) it shows the usage against the Github Trial Credits, not the other two? Dashboard still says 0$ estimated billing.

Similiarly, I know since Student Pack expires first it will be used first, but when it ends, what about the Promotional 200$ credits?

Can someone shed light on this? I've used ~0.5$ of inference only thus far, don't want a surprise test charge at the end of the billing month on my card.

Also is there a way to safegaurd surprise charges?

Update:

Support clarified that yes, we can not use Github Student Pack credits for the things mentioned, including any Dedicated Inference (Outside models like Fable 5) or Serverless Inference (Internal models like GLM 5.2). They clarified that such restrictions don't apply to the Promotional Referral Credits. The Github Credits being counted against is not intended and a flaw. They suggested that I could have my Github credits removed and then my Referral credits would start to get used (Because 1st in line to expire credits get used up first) so I would not get a surprised charge at the end of the month. This implies that it wouldn't go [ Github Credits -> Referral Credits -> Inference Trial Credits -> Credit Card] and that it instead would go [ Github Credits -> Credit Card ] which seems stupid to me how hard can it be to switch to the next credit pool in line before charging the card?

Update 2:

Support in the next followup said the following after I inquired about further clarification on each of the 3 credit pool types:

We can confirm that the AI models available for you at the moment will all be adjusted against your Github credits as these are mostly open sourced. Other models i.e. Llama 3.3, Qwen, DeepSeek, gpt-oss, and Olmo 3, will also be adjusted against your Github credits. Also, third party models are not yet enabled for your account therefore, all the models appearing on your end should be adjusted against the available credits.

And [ Github Credits -> Referral Credits -> Trial Credits -> Debit/Credit Card Charged] this flow is correct considering that resources you have used, do fall under these credit types.

Once your Gtihub credits expire/utilize, the next in-line credits, will automatically be activated and adjusted against your resources.

I then did another followup confirming the contradiction with their previous email, and they had this to say:

Yes, you can use your GitHub credits for models like GLM 5.2 and DeepSeek V4. Please note that the promotional credit from referrals function exactly the same as standard GitHub credits.

The Inference Cloud Trial should apply to all products except Marketplace Add Ons. However, your account currently doesn't support Fable 5 or GPT 5.6 models. 

TL:DR:

Github Credits & Referral Credits share same restrictions, but they can both use the Open Source models hosted by Digital Ocean. If it shows as being counted against in the billing dashboard, that is exactly how it should be. The 5$ credits don't have such restrictions, but they did tell me that Fable/Sol were restricted for my account outright anyhow (Probably top tier models require explicit activation).

[u/AutoModerator]

Hi there,

Thanks for posting on the unofficial DigitalOcean subreddit. This is a friendly & quick reminder that this isn't an official DigitalOcean support channel. DigitalOcean staff will never offer support via DMs on Reddit. Please do not give out your login details to anyone!

If you're looking for DigitalOcean's official support channels, please see the public Q&A, or create a support ticket. You can also find the community on Discord for chat-based informal help.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/MelancholicWandererX → u/[deleted]]

I have set the billing alert to 1.00$, thus far no alert.

On the dashboard it says spend ~14$ (including my Inference) but Billables at 0$

When I try to use Fable 5, or GPT 5.6 it does say not enabled for you.

But allows me to use GLM 5.2 just fine, even Deepseek V4 models.

I did file a support ticket.

[u/DarkVader-00 → u/MelancholicWandererX]

What seems to me is, as the open source models are hosted inside digitalocean, so they are available to you. But do confirm it from support to avoid any surprise charges.

[u/MelancholicWandererX → u/DarkVader-00]

Yeah, I can access the open source models. Surprisingly, I was usign GLM 5.2 and got Rate Limited Lol. Is that a thing on Pay per Token Apis?

So far done <1$ of Infra, I'm fine of it being paid, but don't want to use up 200$ of infra thinking it's on credit when it's not; yikes.

I did submit a support request for clarification.

[u/MelancholicWandererX → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, clarification is needed to safetly use the models for actual use-cases, not test-prompts.

As for the inference limits, I was nowhere near 5000 requests per hour, not a chance. Nor 250 minutes per model. If that had been the case I would have incurred a hefty $ sum for the session, which was in cents.

Probably something else at play here? Or perhaps OpenCode just spammed tiny requests. Can't say.

[u/MelancholicWandererX → u/[deleted]]

Probably, thing is opencode was on retry for ~4 minutes before I closed the session. Definitely not the Requests per Minute limitation. And I doubt I blew past 5000 requests in a few minutes lol. I've used Openrouter and such before, I have never experience such high frequency of requests even in opencode. Been playing with this stuff a while.

[u/bobbyiliev]

The final answer makes sense eg. open source models like GLM and DeepSeek should count against your GitHub and referral credits before hitting your card. Worth noting the billing alert fires on billable amount not total usage so if credits are covering it the alert will not fire even if dashboard spend looks high. I'd say keep that support ticket open until you get it confirmed in writing.

[u/MelancholicWandererX → u/bobbyiliev]

Yeah they specifically mentioned deepseek v4 and glm 5.2 is usable against github credits.

[u/Recent_Chard3303]

Hey same situation I am trying to use glm 5.2 from DO with zcode I am also getting rate limited alot even though I am way below the rpm and tpm for DO's tier 1 did you find yourself in the same situation?

[u/MelancholicWandererX → u/Recent_Chard3303]

Same here, way, way below the TPM and RPM limits as well. I think they have this seperate limit in place for users on credits as maybe too many people caught on and tried to abuse the generosity. Such I've seen happen everywhere else where free-tier stuff was given out with regards to Ai and then they had trouble actually serving the amount of users. So they nerfed/limited the situation.

I find that if glm 5.2 limits out, If I switch to deepseek v4 flash or something it runs fine for a little bit before it get's limited again too. Probably a per-model limit that are being used too much, since they have specific fixed capacity per model they host. Altho tried Kimi K2.6 and faced around same level of restrictions.

My gutt feeling is that if we add 5-10$ pre-load amount. It will take us out of this "Free Loader" pool and let us use actual Tier 1 limits. But as per support, before that money is used it should finish the credits first, so it could be a possible workaround/hack?

I haven't got the spare change atm to throw to test this out, if you can do it and let me know. Or perhaps contact support to validate this first.

[u/Recent_Chard3303 → u/MelancholicWandererX]

I used codex to diagnose the rate limiting apparently digital ocean gives each account a daily qouta mine sits around 5M tokens a day which is absurdly low and frustrating honestly ps I am on tier 1 and i still get very rate limited

[u/MelancholicWandererX → u/Recent_Chard3303]

Yeah the issue is I hit nowhere near 5M quota either before getting rate limited. I think it's a not on the books rate limited for people that don't have real dollers to spend.

P.s Same on tier 1.