Plans and AI credits

Littview has three plans — Free, Pro, and Institution — and one rule that decides what they govern: a project runs on its owner’s plan. This article covers how a limit behaves when you reach it and how AI credits are spent, refilled, and topped up. Your subscription, your credit balance, and the settings that belong to you rather than to any one project all live on your Account Settings page; the other articles in this section cover each of them.

The owner’s plan covers the whole project

Every limit and every AI call in a project is checked against the plan — and the credit balance — of the project’s Owner, whoever performs the action. Nobody else needs a plan: a colleague on Free who reviews in your Pro project gets AI suggestions like everyone else, and the credits come out of your allowance. There is no per-seat pricing.

The flip side is that members are kept out of your billing entirely. They never see your plan name, your balance, or an upgrade prompt — your plan badge sits next to your own name at the bottom of the sidebar, and your credit balance appears only to you. When AI isn’t available to them, the reason is stated for the project, not the plan: AI isn’t available on this project. on a Free owner’s project, or AI assistance is paused for this project — the project owner has been notified. when the credits have run out. The owner is the only person who sees the See plans card, the out-of-credits toast with its Get credits button, or a credit balance anywhere.

Because your members spend your credits, you also have the lever: Toggle AI access in Manage Members switches AI off for one member, who then works exactly as before without suggestions and with an AI off badge on their card (How to invite and manage members). Your own access as owner is always on.

What happens at a limit

Limits answer one question — may I add one more? — and nothing else. They are checked when you create a project, send an invitation, import references, or upload a PDF, and never applied to what already exists. Each has a meter where it matters: Projects on your Account page, invited seats in Manage Members, references on the import page. The bar turns amber as you approach the cap, and what you get at the cap is a clear refusal:

• Projects — Your plan includes 1 project and you already have 1 (archived projects count). Upgrade to create more. Archiving a finished review protects its record but does not free the slot.
• Members — This project’s plan allows 2 invited members and all seats are taken (pending invitations count). Remove a member or upgrade to invite more. An invitation that hasn’t been accepted yet still holds its seat.
• References — an import that would go over the limit is refused as a whole, with the numbers: This import of 250 references would exceed the project’s limit: 0 of 200 slots are used. Nothing was imported. Deleting a library frees its slots.
• Storage — This project has reached its 500 MB storage limit — upgrade for more. The PDFs already attached stay readable; new uploads wait until there is room.

Moving down a plan — cancelling Pro, say — follows the same rule. A project that is now over the Free limits stays fully usable: every paper, PDF, decision, and extraction is still there and still editable. Its meter simply reads Over your plan’s limit — existing projects stay fully usable, and adding more waits until you are back on Pro.

How AI credits work

Credits are the only unit you see — never tokens, models, or prices. Every AI action spends them from the owner’s wallet: a screening suggestion, an extraction draft, a conflict recommendation, a Methods draft, a Results synthesis. The cheapest are the screening and conflict suggestions made from a title and abstract; a full-text re-analysis costs more, and an extraction draft, which reads the whole PDF, costs several times a screening call. The Results synthesis scales with the number of extracted papers, which is why it is the one feature that shows you an estimate and asks you to confirm — Generate Results synthesis? — before it runs. Whatever the feature, the exact charge for every call is listed on the AI usage page (How to track AI usage).

While a call runs, its credits are placed on hold — the Credits card on your Account page reads Balance: 2,400 credits · 12 credits on hold — and settled to what the call actually used when it finishes. A call that fails at the provider or times out releases its hold and charges nothing.

The monthly allowance. Pro includes 2,500 credits a month. At each refill the balance resets to 2,500 — unused credits don’t roll over — and once it is spent, AI pauses until the next refill or until you add extra credits. Annual subscribers get the same refill every month; the billing cycle changes the payment, not the credits.

Running low. When the available balance drops under 20% of the allowance you get a notification and an email — AI credits running low — and another when it reaches zero: You’re out of AI credits. AI assistance is paused until your next refill — or get extra credits now. Nothing else pauses: screening, extraction, conflict resolution, and every report continue by hand, and members see the paused message rather than an error. The two ways forward are the refill date and the buttons on your Credits card.

Extra credits. A Pro owner can buy a pack at any time from the Credits card on the Account page — 1,000 credits — $13 or 2,500 credits — $29 — and the credits are in the wallet within seconds of paying. They are spent only after the monthly allowance is used up, so a pack is never eaten by the refill. All purchased credits form one balance with one expiry date, 12 months from your most recent purchase: buying another pack extends whatever remains to 12 months out again, and you are warned before they expire. As the buy row says, Extra credits are valid for 12 months and require an active Pro subscription to use — if you cancel, the balance stays in your wallet but can’t be spent, and the 12 months keep counting.

Note

Where the balance shows: the Credits card on your Account page breaks it into Available, Balance, Monthly allowance, and Extra credits with their expiry date; and inside a project, a small credit chip sits in the AI panel of every AI feature — screening, extraction, conflicts, and the report generator — turning amber when you are low and red when you are out. Both are yours alone; members never see them.