Runway autobilling: how it works, and Sume's manual top-up
Runway autobilling checks hourly, recharges below a threshold, at least 1,000 credits ($10), and stops after three failed charges. Sume top-ups are manual.
Runway autobilling tops up a project's credits on a schedule: every hour it checks whether the balance is below your "recharge below" value and, if so, charges the card on file for your "recharge amount", at least 1,000 credits ($10). After three failed charges it stops. Sume has no such mechanism; top-ups are started from the dashboard.
Runway details are from its autobilling page, read 2026-10-01. Sume details are from the Credits docs.
How does Runway autobilling work?
You set the two thresholds on the project's billing tab and add a payment method through Stripe. Setting it up or changing it needs the Admin or Billing admin role. If a charge fails, Runway emails you and retries after 24 hours, then once more 24 hours after that. If all three attempts fail it does not try again, until you fix the payment details and trigger autobilling manually from the portal.
Each usage tier has a maximum monthly spend, so a recharge can be capped at the remaining amount; below $10 remaining, autobilling fails.
How does a Sume balance get topped up?
The dashboard can start a Stripe-backed manual credit top-up when billing is configured for the workspace. The docs add that API clients should treat top-ups as dashboard operations, because the public Developer API exposes balance and usage reads (GET /v1/balance, GET /v1/usage) and no top-up creation endpoint.
The pricing FAQ describes shared-wallet purchases from $10 to $1000. Nothing in the docs describes a scheduled recharge, so a script that has to keep running should watch the balance itself.
What happens when the balance runs out?
A generation request is rejected up front with 402 insufficient_credits when Sume cannot reserve the estimated cost from the workspace balance, before any work starts. More in 402 insufficient credits.
| Runway autobilling | Sume | |
|---|---|---|
| Trigger | Hourly balance check | Dashboard action by a person |
| Minimum | 1,000 credits ($10) | $10 (wallet purchases $10 to $1000) |
| API to start it | Not stated on the page | None; reads only |
| Failure handling | Three attempts, then stops | 402 before the work starts |
What should a Sume client do?
Read GET /v1/balance before a large batch and alert a human when it is low. On a 402, stop submitting and do not retry in a loop; a top-up has to happen in the dashboard first.
Sources
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Written by Sume