billing_cost field that tells you exactly what was charged for that call — no aggregated end-of-month surprises. Pricing is either energy-based (measured in kilowatt-hours) or credit-based depending on the model, and you can always see which mode applied by inspecting the paid_with field.
Billing modes
Meliai supports two billing modes:Energy billing
Charges are calculated from the actual energy consumed by the inference workload, measured in kWh. This maps directly to the
environment_impact.energy_kwh value in the response and is the default for most text-generation models.Credit billing
Some models are billed in Meliai credits — a fixed unit that abstracts over provider-specific pricing. Credits are pre-purchased and drawn down per request.
billing_cost object so you always know what was charged:
Routing and cost
Your choice of routing flavor directly affects how much each request costs:
Append the appropriate suffix to your model ID to activate a flavor:
Free trial
You can start using Meliai without a credit card. New accounts receive a free usage allocation so you can explore the API and evaluate models before committing to a paid plan.View current per-model pricing, top up your energy balance or credits, and manage your billing plan at https://meliai.ai/pricing.