Billing and credits
TikTok Transcript API uses credits for transcription and request limits for API traffic. These are separate measures. Creating a new transcript reserves a credit; checking an existing job does not consume a credit but still counts toward your account's request rate.
Start with free credits
A new verified account receives 100 free API credits. No payment card is required. The trial allows 20 API requests per minute and up to five jobs processing at once. Each transcript covers up to 20 minutes of one public TikTok video.
The no-account web tool has a separate guest allowance: one free transcript daily, also up to 20 minutes. Guest transcripts are tied to the browser's guest session rather than your signed-in account. Use the developer API or MCP tools when you want work to appear in your account history.
Choose a subscription
| Plan | Price | Included credits | Top-up price | API rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly | $5 each month | 1,000 each month | $2.50 per 1,000 | 200 requests/minute |
| Annual | $54 each year | 1,000 each month | $1.50 per 1,000 | 300 requests/minute |
Annual billing is equivalent to $4.50 per month. Both plans include the REST API, MCP connection, account dashboard, and support. Neither changes the 20-minute duration limit or the five-job concurrency cap.
Open Billing in your account to choose a plan. Stripe Checkout shows the subscription and payment details before you pay. The site activates paid access after verifying the payment and subscription status with Stripe.
Monthly allowance
Your 1,000 subscription credits refresh each month while the subscription is active. Unused monthly credits do not roll over. Annual subscribers receive the same monthly allowance rather than an immediate block of 12,000 credits.
The dashboard shows the next allowance refresh and the end of the current paid period. For an annual plan, these dates are different: credits refresh monthly while billing happens yearly. Month-end anniversaries use the applicable last day of shorter months.
The service spends active monthly credits first, then purchased top-up credits, then any remaining trial credits. These balances are shown separately so you can understand where your available total comes from.
Reserved and released credits
A new job reserves one credit before processing begins. That reserved credit is removed from the available balance while the video is pending. If processing succeeds, it remains used. If processing fails, reconciliation releases the reservation.
Reading a result, opening the dashboard, and background reconciliation can refresh a failed job and release its credit. If the reservation came from a monthly grant that has already expired, the release does not increase the next month's grant. Trial and top-up reservations return to their original balances.
An invalid request rejected before a job is created does not reserve a credit. Retrying an accepted create request with the same idempotency key and URL returns the original job without another reservation. Repeating the URL without an idempotency key creates a separate request.
Top-ups
An active subscriber can purchase additional blocks of 1,000 credits from Billing. The price depends on the active plan: $2.50 for monthly subscribers or $1.50 for annual subscribers. Top-ups are one-time purchases, not a second recurring subscription.
Purchased top-up credits remain available after cancellation. You need an active subscription to buy more, and your account uses the free request rate when no paid plan is active. Top-ups do not increase concurrency or the maximum duration of a video.
Manage or cancel
Use Manage subscription & invoices in Billing to open your Stripe billing portal. You can update the payment method, view invoices, or cancel renewal there. Cancellation is scheduled for the end of the current paid period.
Subscriptions renew automatically until canceled. If a payment is incomplete or fails, the dashboard may show a non-active subscription state. Resolve the payment issue in the billing portal before expecting the next paid allowance to become available.
If a payment completed but the balance has not updated, return to Billing and refresh. Keep the checkout confirmation or invoice identifier for support. Do not submit another purchase solely because a page took a moment to update.
Billing support
For duplicate charges, refund questions, or account matching problems, contact support. Include the account email and invoice or checkout identifier. Do not include full card numbers, API keys, or sign-in codes.