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, still carries no monthly credit allocation, only a one-time 4,000-credit bonus 3, but paid Pro plans now also include a weekly amount of Computer usage that is spent before any credits and resets on a clock of its own 1. 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. Comet's assistant reads the same meter only in Work mode, which hands your prompt to Computer; its Search mode costs nothing 1. 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. The help center now prints the rule itself: the bonus is "one per account" and does not repeat if you cancel and resubscribe, switch between monthly and yearly billing, or apply a discount or education offer later 1; a Perplexity statement carried on its Better Business Bureau profile says the same, that the bonus "is not reissued on renewals, resubscriptions, or billing-cycle changes" 6.

Paid Pro plans now carry a second, faster clock. Included weekly Computer usage, which the help center says is "rolling out gradually" to paid Consumer Pro accounts, lets you run Computer every week before any credits are touched 1. Its reset is anchored to your first use, not your billing date: the weekly cycle starts the first time you use included usage, "so your reset date is based on when you started using it, not on your billing date," and unused included usage does not roll over from one week to the next 1. It is not a credit: it cannot be purchased, transferred, or refunded, it does not add to your balance, and with no credits behind it Computer runs only on the Light effort setting 1. Your Usage page's "Included in Pro" bar shows the percentage you have left and the day and time it resets 1.

Purchased credits live outside this clock entirely. Computer spends included weekly usage first on paid Pro plans, then burns credits in a fixed order: bonus, then monthly (shown as Plan), then purchased 1. Purchased credits "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. The purchase price no longer has to ride third-party guides: Perplexity's help center prints it outright at 100 credits for $1, and the Enterprise admin guide's FAQ repeats the rate 1 4; third-party guides had already tracked the same number 7.

Five 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 | | - | - | - | - | | Weekly usage cycle | Paid Consumer Pro plans (rolling out gradually; not on promotional, non-paying, Max, or Enterprise plans) | Included weekly Computer usage, spent before any credits; the unused part expires at the weekly reset, which starts from your first use, not your billing date | Computer falls back to your credits, then auto-refill; with neither, sessions block until you buy credits or the week resets | | 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 (Enterprise Pro seats 500 credits, Enterprise Max seats 15,000) 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 | | Daily count plus a weekly ceiling | Free accounts, which use no credits | The free Pro Search allowance: 3 a day on the vendor's October comparison table, while the pricing page still phrases the cap as limited weekly usage | 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, weekly included usage, and purchase expiry 1, Enterprise admin and member guides 4 8, allowances and prices 3, free-tier search allowances 9.

Four different mechanisms wear the word "reset" here: a calendar date (the billing cycle), a fuel gauge that empties on schedule (monthly credits), a second gauge on a weekly timer (Pro's included usage), and turnstiles that readmit you after a window (free search). The first two have carried vendor numbers all along. The new weekly gauge is the mirror image of the free tier's turnstile: Perplexity prints its clock (weekly, anchored to your first use) but not its amount, while the October 2026 comparison table that printed the free tier's 3-a-day count still prints no clock. The moment any cap lifts still has no vendor number.

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, the weekly included Computer usage now rolling out to paid plans, and a one-time 4,000-credit bonus 10 3 1; the same sheet shows no monthly Computer credits for Pro, and third-party trackers confirm there is no recurring allocation 11.
• 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 10 3. At the 100-credits-for-$1 rate Perplexity itself prints 1, 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 (Enterprise Pro seats get 500 credits a month, Enterprise Max seats 15,000, plus one-time bonuses of 8,000 and 40,000 that expire in 30 days) 4, sit beside an admin-funded shared pool 12, can be auto-refilled under a configurable monthly reload limit, and draw from that pool up to named usage limits admins assign per group or member, a system that has replaced the old seat-tier caps 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 8 12. The consumer credits article now prints the identical sequence for individual plans 1, and 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 paid Pro plans the first wall is now the weekly allowance rather than your credits: when included usage runs out, Computer switches to your credits if you have them, to auto-refill if it is on, and otherwise blocks the session until you purchase credits or the week resets 1. Balances can also dip below zero, because the step already running when credits run out still gets billed; any credits added pay the negative off first, so a negative 200 balance plus a 500-credit purchase lands you at 300 1. For individual plans, every Max account carries a monthly spending cap on total credit charges: the default is $200, adjustable up to $5,000 in credit settings, and active tasks pause when you hit it; the help center now adds that Pro accounts have a monthly spending cap too, without printing a default for it 1; Geotoolbox's September guide had the Max default right but printed the ceiling at $2,000 13. Auto-refill is off by default, the help center states directly, and buys credits automatically when the balance runs low, with the trigger set at 500 credits for Pro and 2,500 for Max 1, the auto-reload shift Trending Topics covered in May 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 search cap, and neither Enterprise guide applies to free users 1.

The count itself is now vendor-printed, and it lands on the daily side of the swing. The plan-comparison table, updated October 8 2026, gives Free accounts "3/day" Pro Searches, Pro and Education Pro "weekly limits (average use)," and the Enterprise tiers 400 and 4,000 a week 9. The third-party guides that counted it earlier had disagreed: 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, and Geotoolbox wrote in September 2026 that Perplexity's help center "now lists three a day" and the allowance "resets daily," which the October table confirms 13. What still has no vendor answer is the reset moment: the pricing page's FAQ keeps its weekly phrasing, the comparison table prints counts but no clock, and when a weekly ceiling lifts appears in none of the cited sources. One distinction the new help center text makes easy to miss: Pro's weekly Computer allowance is not this cap. Its reset is documented, weekly and anchored to your first use on your Usage page; the free tier's weekly search ceiling is the one with no printed clock. A reader whose free usage is stuck is most likely pinned by the weekly cap, not the 3-a-day 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 9. If you want Computer at a measured pace, Pro plus purchased credits wins the arithmetic: at the 100-credits-for-$1 rate Perplexity prints in its help center 1, 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 printed rate), before counting its one-time 35,000 bonus, higher limits, and Max-only extras 3 10. Perplexity now publishes typical task costs that make your own estimate concrete: about 15 to 70 credits for a quick fact or definition, 350 to 950 for a multi-step research report, 2,400 to 9,800 for a data dashboard, and 15,000 or more for an entire app build, figures the vendor labels as examples rather than guarantees 1. Pro's new weekly included usage only widens that edge: whatever the allowance covers is Computer time you never have to buy at any rate, so the 18,000-credit break-even stands as the worst case for Pro, not the best 1. The break-even arithmetic rides the vendor's own printed rate rather than a third-party estimate; the one assumption left to you is how many credits a month you actually burn.

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 October 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.