I’ve had a Vercel account with a verified payment method for several months. For the first two months, I was able to use the $5 monthly free credit for AI Gateway as expected, even with a payment method on file.
However, in the past few days, my AI Gateway free credit balance suddenly dropped to $0, despite never having purchased any AI Gateway credits or taken any action to switch to the paid tier. I only added the payment method for verification purposes and have stayed within the free usage limits.
Expected behavior: My account should remain on the free tier and continue receiving the $5 monthly AI Gateway credit, since I haven’t made any purchases.
Actual behavior: The free credit is now $0, and the system appears to have moved me to the paid tier automatically.
Could you please investigate why this transition occurred and restore my free tier eligibility if appropriate?
Thanks for reaching out here. As I can see in your account, you received your $5 credit on 5 Jan, 2026 and there are transactions from 5 to 9 January where the credits were used before they reached $0.
This all seems normal usage to me and not via our system.
I’d request you to visit the AI Gateway tab in your Vercel dashboard and view the usage to understand how the credits were consumed. Let me know if you need more help.
Thank you for checking my account. I understand that the $5 credit was issued on January 5, 2026, and that usage logs show consumption through January 9.
However, I want to emphasize that I’ve been using AI Gateway within normal, expected patterns—nothing unusual or excessive. There were no bulk requests, automated scripts, or unexpected traffic. Yet the credit dropped to $0 much faster than anticipated, almost as if it disappeared “by magic.”
I don’t believe this aligns with typical free-tier usage behavior, especially since I’ve used the same setup in previous months without issue.
That said, I’ll monitor closely during the next billing cycle (starting February 5) to see if the credit renews and behaves as expected. In the meantime, if there’s any way to review whether there might have been an anomaly—such as incorrect metering or a background process consuming credits unintentionally—I’d really appreciate your help looking into it.