When Do Perplexity Credits Reset? Billing Cycles, No Rollover, and What Each Plan Gets

Perplexity credits reset monthly with your billing cycle, and unused credits do not roll over: whatever your plan granted and you did not spend is gone when the cycle refreshes 1. Computer, Perplexity's autonomous AI worker that researches, creates documents and apps, and manages email, is the only meter the credits run on 2. Max, at $200 a month, is the only individual plan with a monthly Computer-credit grant: 10,000 credits 3. Pro, at $20 a month, carries no monthly Computer allocation, only a one-time 4,000-credit bonus 3. Enterprise credits refresh on the organization's billing-cycle date, not the member's signup date 4. Run out mid-cycle and new Computer tasks stop until credits return; purchased credits are the exception, because they never reset and are consumed last 1.

The monthly reset is a cliff, not a rollover

The credit meter only moves for Computer: "Your Perplexity Ask searches remain unlimited and don't use credits," per the What is Computer? article 2. If your plan includes a monthly amount, it arrives with the billing cycle, and "unused monthly credits do not roll over": the leftover balance expires when the cycle ends 1. Annual plans do not push the reset to a yearly renewal date: "Annual subscribers still refresh monthly on the day you first signed up," the consumer credits article says 1. The bonus credits shipped with Pro (4,000) and Max (35,000) are one-time grants rather than recurring refills, and each batch expires in 30 days 1 5; a Perplexity statement carried on its Better Business Bureau profile says the bonus "is not reissued on renewals, resubscriptions, or billing-cycle changes" 6.

Purchased credits live outside this clock entirely. Perplexity's help center says they are consumed last and "stay in your account until you use them," expiring only after a year without Computer use 1. In an Enterprise organization pool, purchased credits expire after 12 months of organization-wide inactivity 4. Two guides that cite Perplexity's credits documentation put the purchase price at 100 credits per $1 7 8.

Four reset clocks, one table

Perplexity splits its limits across several separate help articles (consumer credits, an Enterprise member guide, an Enterprise admin guide, the What is Computer? article, and a subscription plan guide) plus a pricing page. The table below assembles every recurring clock those sources define onto one screen:

| Clock | Applies to | What resets | What stops when it empties | | - | - | - | - | | Monthly billing cycle | Pro and Max individuals; only Max has a monthly grant (10,000 credits) | Included Computer credits; the unused part expires when the cycle refreshes | New Computer tasks are blocked; active tasks pause | | Organization billing-cycle date | Enterprise members | Per-user monthly allocations and the admin-funded shared pool | Member tasks pause; credits used past zero show up as a negative balance until your next refresh or refill | | Short rolling windows plus a weekly cap | Free accounts, which use no credits | The free Pro Search allowance | Advanced search modes throttle; basic search keeps working | | No clock at all | Purchased credits on any paid plan | Nothing; they are consumed last and kept until used | They expire after a year of Computer inactivity (12 months of organization-wide inactivity in an org pool) |

Table sources: consumer credits and purchase expiry 1, Enterprise admin and member guides 4 9, allowances and prices 3, free-tier search allowances 10.

Three different mechanisms wear the word "reset" here: a calendar date (the billing cycle), a fuel gauge that empties on schedule (monthly credits), and turnstiles that readmit you every few hours (free search windows). Only the first two carry published vendor numbers. The turnstile counts come from third-party guides, and they have swung during 2026.

What Free, Pro, Max, and Enterprise actually get

• Free, $0: access to the top AI models "with limited weekly usage," no Computer, and a dash in the pricing sheet's credits column 3.
• Pro, $20 a month or $200 a year, adds Computer access and a one-time 4,000-credit bonus 11 3; the same sheet shows no monthly Computer credits for Pro, and third-party trackers confirm there is no recurring allocation 7.
• Max, $200 a month or $2,000 a year, adds the only recurring individual grant: 10,000 credits a month, plus a 35,000 one-time bonus 11 3. At the 100-credits-per-$1 rate the two guides attribute to Perplexity's own documentation 7 8, that monthly grant is $100 of purchasable credit: half of Max's price is the refill itself.
• Enterprise Pro, $40 a user a month, adds the organization-wide clock: allocations refresh on the organization's billing-cycle date, sit beside an admin-funded shared pool 4 12, and can be auto-refilled under a configurable monthly reload limit 4.

What hitting zero looks like: pause, block, resume

Perplexity's Enterprise member guide gives the sequence as three numbered steps, and the Academy walkthrough of Computer credits describes the same behavior 9 12. For individual plans, the What is Computer? article says active tasks "pause (not cancel) and resume automatically when credits are available" 2:

1. Active tasks pause.
2. New tasks are blocked.
3. Tasks resume automatically once credits are available again.

For individual plans, Geotoolbox reports a monthly spending limit on Max that defaults to $200 and adjusts up to $2,000, with running tasks pausing at the cap 13. Auto-refill is off by default and purchases credits automatically when the balance runs low, per Trending Topics' coverage of the auto-reload shift 5; organizations get the same lever with an admin-set reload limit 4.

The weekly-limit reset no cited Perplexity article states

The r/perplexity_ai thread "When does the weekly limit reset?" (February 2026) asks exactly what the vendor pages leave out 14. Perplexity's pricing page says only that free accounts include "limited weekly usage" 3; the consumer credits article covers Computer credits and never touches the weekly cap, and neither Enterprise guide applies to free users 1.

The guides that do count it disagree with each other. AI Q&A Hub reported "5 Pro Searches per 4-hour rolling" window in May 2026 15. CheckThat listed 3 Pro searches per day in March 2026 16. Geotoolbox wrote in September 2026 that Perplexity's help center "now lists three a day" and the allowance "resets daily," noting that older guides still said five 13. The honest read: the reported free window has swung between a daily count and a 4-hour cycle during 2026, a weekly ceiling rides on top, and the moment the weekly cap lifts appears in none of the cited sources. A reader whose free usage is stuck is most likely pinned by the weekly cap, not the daily one.

The cheaper path, with the break-even

If you only search, Free already gives you practically unlimited basic searches, because Ask searches remain unlimited and use no credits 2 10. If you want Computer at a measured pace, Pro plus purchased credits wins the arithmetic: at the reported 100-credits-per-$1 rate, a subscriber using Max's full 10,000-credit grant every month would pay $120 on Pro ($20 plan plus $100 of credits) against Max's $200. Max earns its premium only above roughly 18,000 credits of steady monthly usage, where its $180 gap over Pro matches what those credits would cost to buy ($180 at the reported rate), before counting its one-time 35,000 bonus, higher limits, and Max-only extras 3 11. Both break-even figures ride the third-party purchase rate, so treat them as guides rather than vendor prices.

Related ProvenBrief pages: 1(https://provenbrief.com/story/perplexity-pricing-pro-max-teams-and-api-costs), [When do ChatGPT credits reset](https://provenbrief.com/story/when-do-chatgpt-credits-reset-every-reset-window-and-credit-rule-per-plan), and [When do Windsurf credits reset](https://provenbrief.com/story/when-do-windsurf-credits-reset-quota-reset-times-explained).

Verified September 2026. Vendor figures come from Perplexity's help center and pricing pages; third-party numbers are marked as such in the text. This page is re-checked whenever Perplexity changes its allocations.