Inside LeadEngine there are two wallets you spend from, not one—and mixing them up is the #1 reason campaigns stall.
Platform Credits power the core engines you already pay for (CopyEngine, EnrichEngine, EmailEngine).
Metered Balance covers anything that costs real money outside our walls—AI tokens and third‑party enrichments.
Here’s how it all fits together and how to keep both wallets topped up.
Bucket | What It Pays For | How You Fund It |
Platform Credits | • Usage in CopyEngine, EnrichEngine, & EmailEngine | • Included with every paid plan in fixed monthly amounts |
Metered Balance | • AI writing fees on: – Live email sends (if AI copy is enabled) – Warm‑up emails (AI copy always on) • Third‑party enrichments via our waterfall (LeadMagic, ZeroBounce, Prospeo, MillionVerifier, Findymail, Icypeas, Firecrawl, etc.) | • You pre‑pay any amount you like• Balance is decremented in real time when costs are incurred |
Your monthly Platform Credits are automatically sliced into five usage buckets. You’ll see the current balance for each one in Dashboard → Usage.
Bucket | What It Measures | Actions That Consume It |
Email Sends | Outbound cold emails (the send itself; any AI writing costs live in the Metered Balance) | Any message that actually leaves a mailbox |
Lead Storage | How many unique leads you keep in your workspaces at any time | Importing CSVs, syncing CRMs, receiving webhook leads |
Email Accounts | Mailboxes connected to LeadEngine for sending or warm‑up | Adding new Gmail/O365/SMTP accounts |
EnrichEngine Leads | Leads run through our in‑house enrichment | Kicking off an enrichment job |
CopyEngine Leads | Leads run through any CopyEngine campaign | Generating first‑touch or follow‑up templates in bulk |
Everything else (OpenAI tokens, LeadMagic look‑ups, ZeroBounce verifications, etc.) still uses the Metered Balance, unless you’ve swapped in your own API key.
Upload a list or trigger an enrichment.
LeadEngine checks your plan settings:
Unlimited plan + your own API key → we call the provider on your key. No Metered charge.
Any other case → we call the provider on our key and deduct the cost from your Metered Balance.
AI copywriting (live sends & warm‑ups) hits OpenAI or another model.
If you’ve plugged in your own OpenAI key, that key is billed directly.
Otherwise, the model cost comes off your Metered Balance.
Third‑party enrichments stop. Leads will be returned “unverified” or skipped.
Campaigns deactivated. No campaign can be activated without a balance.
We’ll send low‑balance alerts.
(Tip: enable auto‑recharge in Settings → Metered Balance to avoid interruptions.)
Scenario | Costs Hit | Where They Deduct |
You enrich 1,000 leads and LeadMagic finds 600 emails | LeadMagic find fee |
|
You send 10,000 warm‑up emails using AI copy | OpenAI tokens | Metered Balance (unless your own key) |
You send 5,000 live emails with AI and personalization | OpenAI tokens + website/profile scraping | Metered Balance for each email and scrape. |
Q: Do Unlimited plans completely eliminate the Metered Balance?
A: No. You’ll still need Metered funds if you’re using our API keys instead of using your own API key for that specific provider.
Q: Do unused Platform Credits roll over?
A: No. They refresh at the start of each billing cycle. Metered funds, however, never expire.
Plug in your own keys if you have volume discounts with a provider—it can be cheaper than our wholesale rate at times.
Set auto‑recharge to a small threshold ($50) so you never stall a campaign.
Need more help?
Open a chat from the dashboard or email support@leadengine.ai—we’ve got your back.
