How to top up AI API credits and check your balance

You top up Sume API credits in the dashboard, not through the API. Open Billing & subscription, buy credits for Developer API usage, and finish the Stripe checkout. The public API can then read your balance and usage, but it has no endpoint that creates a top-up.

The steps come from Sume's Billing and credits and Usage docs and the API reference, read 2026-09-29.

How do I top up my balance?

The balance is in US dollars and scoped to the workspace. Sume's pricing FAQ says video generation, Sume Agent, Formats and the API all draw from one balance.

• Sign in and open Billing & subscription. Older docs called this page Credits.
• Start a manual top-up. The dashboard can do this when billing is configured for the workspace.
• Pay in the Stripe checkout. Sume's pricing FAQ says teams can fund a shared wallet with on-demand purchases from $10 to $1000.
• Check the page's available balance, or read it from the API as shown below.

Can I top up through the API?

No. The docs tell API clients to treat top-ups as dashboard operations: the public Developer API currently exposes balance and usage reads, not a top-up creation endpoint. Both reads are read-only and scoped to the workspace of the API key you send.

So your code can watch the balance but cannot refill it. Check the balance before a bulk submit, not only after a 402.

How do I check my balance from code?

Call GET /v1/balance with your key. The balance sits under data.balance; these are the fields to read.

curl https://api.sume.com/v1/balance \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  | jq '.data.balance | {state, available_amount_usd_cents}'

How do I know a top-up went through?

After checkout completes, the usage ledger can show the top-up and the updated balance. GET /v1/usage lists the ledger entries, which can include reservations, captures, refunds, top-ups and grants, depending on the workspace and environment.

A 402 insufficient_credits on a generation submit means Sume could not reserve the estimated cost from the balance. Add funds, then submit again with a new request. The full path is in insufficient credits: what the 402 means.

Do top-up credits expire?

The docs read for this post do not state a fixed expiry period for top-up credits, so check the balance response rather than assuming one. It carries an expiration object: the next expiry time, the amount expiring then, and the amount expiring inside an expiring-soon window. It excludes expired, reserved, captured or depleted credits. For how credits and expiry work in general, see How do AI credits work?.