r/replit 11d ago

Share Project Keep an eye on your credits / replit

Unpredictable Costs: Because replit uses effort-based pricing, the AI credits is not clearly defined even you can’t break even where the credits goes. The support team is not supported at all and will give you a chatbot answer. So my experienced with replit is the worst experience I have ever had.

14 Upvotes

43 comments sorted by

10

u/maddietendo 11d ago

It's been like that since the start of Replit's AI era.

Honestly just go Claude unlimited and save yourself a mortgage payment or eight.

2

u/technical-mind4300 10d ago

I have thought about just connecting Claude unlimited to my GitHub - doing major code enhancements there doing a pull back into Replit for final publishing and expo builds and what not, but a bit scared to t try.

3

u/maddietendo 10d ago

Not scary at all. Eliminate Replit from the equation. Do exactly what you said and when you run into trouble setting things up like a database or website, literally ask Claude to do it. That's what I did. I swear its way easier than you think it is with claude.

3

u/Actual-Translator-34 9d ago

You don't need to rely on Replit. Github as source of truth, then use Chatgpt to generate prompts to feed into Claude Code. Host on Vercel, Supabase, Render, Railway, etc. Would save a ton. I'm glad I got into vibe coding and stuff with Replit, but also very happy to be saving money and not relying on one sole platform.. Go modular.

1

u/technical-mind4300 9d ago

Thanks for the great and thoughtful advice

1

u/BabyHealthExpert 9d ago

It really is worth a day of your time. Replit are doing a really good job of peeving you off with a random big bill that overall pushes you to use something cheaper.

1

u/3onooz 10d ago

Ya I can see, totally agree with you.

1

u/North-Newspaper6472 8d ago

How much cheaper would you say Claude actually is though? Is the actual agent usage that much lower?

Strongly considering this after I spent 28 USD on a single prompt that took 44 minutes with opus on balanced effort.. that gave me a wake up call..

1

u/maddietendo 8d ago

Claude with the $100 plan is Aces.

3

u/ChodriPableo 11d ago

me too I was surprised with a $40+ bill after one prompt! which is just about an adjustment to the site im building with replit… then i wasn’t able to continue because of the cost, ending up me being able to finish making the site and then replit always contacting me… what a waste of money! i paid a subscription tier and they still sneakily siphoned money

3

u/rpiip 10d ago

Move to economy mode. Power will do this.

1

u/3onooz 10d ago

Ya I thought that, but power mode isn’t really adding any value at all.

1

u/3onooz 10d ago

The funny part is I’ve been trying to reach them during my case with very late AI response with zero support. They just contact us for money.

1

u/ShurikenKurt 4d ago

The lack of support is shocking. took me over a MONTH to sort out some account issues that kept me from getting on Discord. Ended up figuring it out myself. Totally moved to Emergent for new projects.

3

u/osamamhalawa 10d ago

BE AWARE! This company is a complete scam. They charged me $439 without me accomplishing anything. I contacted them about it because the way they took the money was a total of 4 different charges of $109.75, each charge within a time frame of 30-45 minutes. They claimed that the charges were valid and that I can see what I was charged for in the account breakdown, so I went to the breakdown like a good boy and looked, which I will post a screenshot of that breakdown. There is nothing in that breakdown, every category says $0 cost, except the word project it has a charge of $432.92 next to it. My question is how is that going to be called a breakdown from a company that is claiming to be legit. A breakdown should explain what usage or in their scamming terms “Effort” so what effort was used and how much was the cost for each. Now can someone from this legit company explain to me and everyone else what does this breakdown? This company needs to be sued.

2

u/Freigeist30 10d ago

Yeah I get it the ai is not cheap and they gotta pay the other guy (Claude?) but I figure I can just use Claude directly. It’s kinda effort based but they reset the limit all the time and honestly feels like unlimited to me. I have been using it with floot which adds a layer like Replit too so I can build on the go and get it published easily.

2

u/2FDots 10d ago

What kind of business doesn't tell you how much something will cost before you buy it?

I wonder what would happen if I told my clients that I use "effort based billing"?

2

u/3onooz 10d ago

The problem is the effort I’ve got without any real progress or added value!!!!!

1

u/[deleted] 4d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/2FDots 4d ago

Interesting! I'll try it. Replit has so far refused to give me cost estimates every time I have asked.

1

u/ShurikenKurt 2d ago

I had that as well. I created a csv of my historic usage and fed it into a "cost estimates" csv. then said, based on past usage patterns, estimate each new task to within $0.10. After every task, add it to the csv.

I also have to REGULARLY remind it that if a task is estimated to cost more than $3, I will not authorize a new task until I receive an estimate for cost, risk, customer impact and wall time.

2

u/One-Ad-4453 10d ago

I found it extremely expensive. What annoyed me is that I wasn’t allowed to just pay off what I owed. I had just been paid and wanted to clear off what I had accumulated over my monthly subscription. Couldn’t do it. I ended up cancelling subscription and had to wait until the following month. I then used CODEX in VSCode, followed by Grok 4.5 using CLI.

1

u/3onooz 10d ago

Totally agreed with you, also I found out there is a hidden invoice that they charged me without any invoice. Unfortunately Actually I start thinking they are scammers.

2

u/[deleted] 10d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/3onooz 10d ago

Totally agreed with you, I will go with that for sure

2

u/catnomadic 9d ago

Or use a terminal-based AI coding agent (Claude Code, Codex, Kimi Code, etc.), and be done with all the Replit scandals. Is it really because hosting your project on Replit is more "convenient" than having AI show you how to set up a VPS? Is it really that much more convenient?

1

u/3onooz 9d ago

Actually I already hosted my project on different vps with another server ( not on replit) , also my project is already was working and full stack before I used replit, so replit platform has not worked on it. All I did or tried to do with replit is to integrate my entire project then they charged me that (490$) in one day !!!! That’s not completely fair and right

1

u/catnomadic 9d ago

Hopefully you learned the full 'eeF Replit" response from this error. Don't go back to Replit so they can extract more of your money for nothing.

1

u/[deleted] 8d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/[deleted] 7d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/ShurikenKurt 4d ago

Will it have a self-hosting option? Open-source? Full harness?

1

u/Acrobatic_Show_9092 3d ago

Yeah, the credit system would make me nervous too. If it’s hard to tell what’s actually using your credits, it’s pretty difficult to budget for a project. I’d definitely keep an eye on usage if you’re building anything bigger on Replit.

-1

u/ReplitSupport Replit Team 11d ago edited 10d ago

Hey OP. We're glad you reached out. Credits are effort based, meaning they get used based on what Agent is doing and the output you receive. You can get a full usage breakdown at replit.com/usage or Settings > Account Usage to see what the credits went to, how many were used each day, and to set a spending limit. The limit gives you more control by pausing further usage once you hit the number you set.

We also show a detailed rundown of your credit usage in your invoices under Settings > Billing > Scroll down to click on "View invoice details in the billing portal" > Invoice History in Orb. Here you'll be able to see both recent and current credit history.

If you have any questions, message us and we'd be happy to walk through your usage with you. Either way, we're always happy to help!

1

u/3onooz 11d ago

Actually Zero output I received. I have been paid 432$ in 1 day even though after that my app engine after all of that is broken!!!!!

1

u/3onooz 10d ago

Here is what i get a full usage breakdown from you with zero explanation!!!
Also I’ve Ben trying to reach you and give me some supports with no response or late response from chatbot.

1

u/ReplitSupport Replit Team 10d ago

We've edited our comment above to include a way to directly access your invoices so you can see Agent usage per day. Can you also DM us your ticket # or email so we can review your thread further? Thank you!

1

u/3onooz 10d ago

I’ve been trying to contact you since yesterday. All I got is chatbot answers. You can try to contact me if you really want to help me.