Pay-as-you-go Credits
Not everyone wants a monthly subscription. If you only cut a few projects a year — a kitchen, a wardrobe, a batch of shelves — paying every month for optimizations you rarely use makes no sense. Credit packs let you pay once for a set number of optimizations and use them whenever you need, with no recurring bill.
Most cutting-optimization tools sell monthly subscriptions or perpetual desktop licenses; a credit pack is a one-time top-up of runs instead.
How credits work
CutOptim gives every free account 3 optimizations per month. When you reach that limit, instead of forcing you onto a subscription, you can simply buy a credit pack:
- Your 3 free monthly optimizations are always used first.
- Once they are gone, each additional optimization that month draws one credit.
- At the start of the next month, your free quota resets to 3 again — credits are only touched after the free quota runs out.
The monthly free quota does not accumulate. Unused free runs are lost at month end. Credits are different — they stay valid for 12 months and stack across purchases.
Buying a credit pack
There are two packs:
| Pack | Optimizations |
|---|---|
| Starter | 10 |
| Value | 25 |
The current price for your currency is shown on the Pricing page. Both packs are valid for 12 months from the date of purchase. You can buy a pack from three places:
- The Pricing page, in the Pay as you go section.
- The in-app prompt that appears when you reach your monthly limit.
- The Buy more link on your dashboard once you hold credits.
Checkout is a single secure payment through Lemon Squeezy (our Merchant of Record, EU VAT handled). There is nothing to cancel afterwards.
Using your credits
Credits are spent automatically — there is no button to press. After your monthly free quota is used up, the next optimization simply consumes a credit. CutOptim always draws from the pack that expires soonest, so nothing goes to waste.
Every tool is already in your free account. Credits are not about unlocking tools — every optimization already runs with all of them: the material inventory, material-specific mode, cost optimization, Excel / DXF / SVG export, the step-by-step sawing plan and the PDF export. What a credit buys is one extra run beyond your 3 free monthly optimizations. While you hold credits, your PDFs carry no “Generated with CutOptim” footer line. Credits add runs only — saving projects and cuts to the cloud, sharing plans by link and priority support stay Pro features.
Validity and expiry
Each pack lasts 12 months. Your dashboard shows:
- your current balance (total unused credits across all active packs), and
- the earliest expiry date — the day your soonest-expiring pack runs out.
Buy a top-up at any time; new credits stack on top of what you already have.
Credits or subscription — which should I choose?
Every cutting tool is available on both — and on the free plan too. The difference is mainly how you pay for runs, plus what only a subscription adds:
- Choose credits if you optimize occasionally — a few projects spread across the year. Pay once, no commitment, and every run still has every tool.
- Choose Pro if you optimize regularly every month. A subscription swaps paying per run for unlimited optimizations, and adds saving projects and cuts to the cloud, sharing plans by link and priority support; it becomes the cheaper option once you would need more than about 13–15 extra runs a month on top of the 3 free ones.
There is no wrong answer — start with credits, and switch to Pro whenever your usage grows.
Credits work in every mode, nesting included. One credit pays for one run, whichever mode it is — 2D, 1D, wood or true-shape nesting. On Pro, where nesting has a monthly allowance, a credit also covers a nesting run once that allowance is used up.