Making the most of your 50 trial AI credits

Every clariBI trial includes 50 AI credits for 14 days, along with 3 data sources, 1 GB of storage and 40 OCR pages. No card is needed. Fifty credits goes a long way if you know which parts of the product use them and which do not. This guide explains both, shows how the cost of a question is worked out, and suggests a plan for the two weeks.

What costs nothing

A large part of a trial uses no credits at all:

• Connecting and syncing sources: Stripe, HubSpot and other MCP apps, Google Analytics, Google Ads, Meta Ads, API connectors, databases and file uploads.
• The automatic dashboard clariBI builds for every source after its first sync.
• Manual-mode dashboards, built from a dashboard template by choosing which column fills each slot, and their refreshes.
• Viewing dashboards and reports, and downloading a report as PDF.
• Goals and recording their progress.
• Settings, including two-factor sign-in.

So the first rule is simple: connect everything you want to evaluate before you spend a credit, and look at the automatic dashboards first. They often answer the obvious questions ("what does revenue look like by month?") on their own.

What uses credits

Credits are used when the language model does work for you:

• Questions in Ask clariBI.
• AI dashboards, when created and every time they refresh.
• AI reports generated from a template.
• AI Vision, which reads a scanned PDF or image with the model when plain OCR finds no text. You see an estimate before it runs.
• AI analysis of goals.

Forecasting is not part of the trial; it starts on Starter.

How the cost of a question is worked out

Credits are based on usage, not a fixed price per action. For each question, clariBI counts the text the model reads (your question, the column list of the sources in the session, the results of the calculations) and the text it writes, prices it at a fixed rate, and applies a multiplier for the type of task. Every question costs at least 1 credit. The rate is the same whichever model serves the call.

What that means in practice:

• Fewer sources in a session means a cheaper question. The model reads the column list of every source you tick, whether or not the question needs it.
• Narrow questions cost less than broad ones. "What was revenue by month in 2026?" needs one calculation. "Tell me everything about my business" asks for many.
• Reports cost more than single questions, because they compute several metrics and write several sections.
• Stopping an answer early (the stop button while it runs) means no further credits are charged for it.
• A report that cannot run because your data lacks the fields the template needs shows Data Mismatch Detected and refunds credits for that run.

Your balance is under Usage This Month in the sidebar and as Credits in the header, and each report shows how many credits it used. The easiest way to calibrate is to note the balance before and after your first few questions. The AI credits help article has the full list.

The trap to avoid: auto-refreshing AI dashboards

An AI dashboard re-runs its analysis each time it refreshes, and each refresh uses credits. The default refresh frequency is daily. An AI dashboard left on daily refresh for the whole trial can quietly use a noticeable share of 50 credits.

During a trial, either set AI dashboards to manual refresh in their Settings, or build the dashboards you want to keep in manual mode, which never uses credits.

A plan for the two weeks

Days 1 to 2: connect and look (0 credits). Connect the two or three sources your weekly numbers come from. The first five minutes guide covers the setup. Open each automatic dashboard and check the numbers against what you know: last month's revenue, last week's sessions. If something is off, fix the source now rather than asking questions about wrong data.

Days 3 to 7: ask the questions you actually have. Write down five to ten questions you currently answer by hand, then ask them one at a time, in sessions that include only the sources each question needs. Good shapes:

• "What was total revenue for each of the last six months, and the change from month to month?"
• "Which 10 customers brought in the most revenue this year?"
• "What was ad spend by channel last month, Google Ads versus Meta Ads?"
• "Compare sessions and sign-ups by week for the last quarter."

Use follow-ups ("break that down by product") instead of starting over; the session keeps the context. The 30 example questions and the post on writing better questions have more.

Days 8 to 11: one or two reports. Pick a report template that matches a real recurring task, such as a monthly performance review, and generate it on your data. Read the summary, click through the charts to check the numbers, and download the PDF. This is the closest preview of what a scheduled report would give you on a paid plan.

Days 12 to 14: keep what worked, decide. Turn the questions you asked more than once into a dashboard. A manual-mode dashboard keeps the numbers visible after the trial without credits. Then compare what you learned with what the paid plans include on the pricing page.

What happens when the credits or the trial run out

If the credits run out before the trial ends, AI features stop and you see a message saying so. Everything else keeps working: sources, syncs, dashboards, goals and PDF downloads. Credit packs can be bought on paid plans only.

When the 14 days end, the organization moves to the Free plan. Nothing is charged, and you keep your data, up to 3 data sources and their automatic dashboards, and your goals. The AI features, reports and dashboards you build yourself need a paid plan: Lite at $19 a month adds manual dashboards without AI; Starter at $99 a month includes 500 credits a month, AI questions, reports, templates and forecasting. The details are in what happens when the trial ends.

A concrete first step: connect the one source your Monday numbers come from, open its automatic dashboard, and only then ask your first question in Ask clariBI. Note the credit balance before and after. After three questions you will know how far 50 credits will take you.