Account and billing

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What Laintas is

Laintas is an AI-native technology company, building the AI foundation and creating the next generation of intelligent products: Helpwo, Laintas CLI, Laintas Search, Laintas Scene and Laintas Compute. One Laintas account signs you in to all of them, and your balance and membership benefits apply under each product’s rules. This documentation covers what is the same in every product — the account, the balance, membership and payments; how to use each product is in that product's own documentation.

What every product shares

What each product owns

Features, commands, configuration, model parameters and token-level detail belong to the product, and each product explains and shows them in its own documentation and UI. laintas.com records money: every charge says which product it came from, so the console can show what each product spent.

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Product documentation

Each product documents itself on its own site.

Account

Signing up and signing in

Sign-in, sign-up and password recovery happen only on accounts.laintas.com. Product sites never collect your password: choosing "Sign in" in a product sends you to the account centre and returns you to the page you came from with a session.

Sign-in methods

• Email and password — the address is verified with a 6-digit code after sign-up.
• Google or GitHub — link a provider to an existing account under Settings → Linked accounts; afterwards either method signs in to the same account.
• Forgotten password — choose "Forgot password" on the sign-in page and follow the emailed link.

Product sessions

Each product site gets its own session once you sign in. The "Security & access" page on accounts.laintas.com lists which products are signed in and lets you revoke them one at a time or all at once. If a device is lost or you suspect someone else is using the account, revoke everything there first, then change your password.

Phone number

A phone number is optional. It is used only as a contact for transactional notices — never to sign in or to recover the account.

Account

Signing in from the terminal and local programs

Programs without a browser of their own — Laintas CLI, the Helpwo local kernel — sign in with device authorization: the program prints a link, and you approve it once in a browser on any device.

1. 1Start sign-in in the program (for example /login in the CLI). It prints an authorization link.
2. 2Open that link in a browser on any device; if you are not signed in, accounts.laintas.com asks you to sign in first.
3. 3Check that the request is the one you just started, then approve it. The program receives its session automatically — no token to copy.

Billing

What the Laintas balance is

The Laintas balance is prepaid digital value on your account, kept in US dollars. It belongs to the account, not to a product: metered charges from every Laintas product come out of this one balance.

The balance is only for Laintas services: it is not a bank deposit, stored-value card, fiat money or crypto asset, and it cannot be withdrawn, cashed out or moved between accounts unless applicable law requires otherwise. See the Billing and refund policy.

Billing

Balance holds

A call paid from the balance first holds the most it could possibly cost, then settles to what it actually used when it finishes, returning the difference at once. That way a reply is never produced and then found unpaid.

• The hold is estimated from the size of the request and the longest output the model allows, so it is usually far above the real cost.
• If the call fails and the model produced nothing, the whole hold is returned.
• If the connection drops before settlement, it is settled about half an hour later from the progress recorded; with no recorded progress, the whole hold is returned.
• While a call runs, the balance looks lower; the console shows the hold as "in progress", not as spend.
• With a small balance, a long-context or deep-thinking model may be refused (insufficient_balance) because its hold exceeds the balance, even if the call would cost little; calls running at the same time each hold separately.
• Calls inside the membership allowance involve no hold. During a refund review, the requested amount is held too.

Billing

How a call is paid for

Every AI call looks for something to pay with in a fixed order and stops at the first source that can pay. A call is never charged twice.

Members

1. 1Monthly membership allowance, shared by expressly supported products and call types; rentals and Issues are excluded.
2. 2Purchased credit packs, used only once the monthly allowance is spent.
3. 3Account balance, billed per token — only while "Keep using balance after the allowance" is on in the console (on by default). When it is off the call is refused and nothing is charged.

If you pause your allowance on the Pricing page, the first two steps are skipped and calls are charged straight to the balance at balance rates.

Without a membership

1. 1New-account free trial — usable in Helpwo, Laintas CLI and the assistant in the corner of this site, with no payment method needed; see Pricing for how many calls and which models.
2. 2Account balance, billed per token.

Billing

Model tiers and pricing

Every model has a tier (T0–T5) that says how strong it is, not what it costs. The price is each model's own, per token: paid from balance, the balance price on the pricing page; paid with member credits, the member price in credits — far below the balance price for most models. The balance price, the member price and the saving for each model are on the pricing page; the member price there is a reference, and what a call draws is settled per call.

• Input tokens served from cache are billed at the model's cached price, below ordinary input. When an agent resends the same context, most of its input is cached.
• Tokens a model spends thinking (reasoning) are billed as output tokens.
• Retrieval, embedding and reranking are billed per token too; they run on small models and cost very little per call.
• A newly added model may bill at a conservative higher price until its price is settled.

Plan calls and balance calls differ: plan calls are far cheaper, while balance calls are steadier with better cache hits. Once the credits run out and the balance pays, later calls are balance calls.

Billing

Allowance periods and limits

Each membership plan includes one monthly allowance shared by every product, plus a 5-hour limit that runs in windows. Plan prices and allowance sizes are on the pricing page.

• The monthly allowance resets on the day of the month you subscribed (UTC), not on the 1st; changing plan or buying again does not restart the cycle.
• Unused allowance does not roll over.
• The 5-hour limit runs in windows and applies only to the plan allowance: a window starts with your first call, allows up to the limit for five hours, then the whole allowance comes back at once and your next call starts a new window. When the limit is reached, any credit pack you hold takes over with no wait.

Billing

Seeing usage: the console

The console shows your allowance and spend across every product on one page.

Using the balance after the allowance

The allowance card in the console has a "Keep using balance after the allowance" switch. On (the default), calls past the allowance are charged to the balance; off, they are refused with the code quota_exhausted and nothing is charged. Only you can change this switch, in the console — a product cannot turn it on for you.

Billing

Activation: hosting your own API keys

You do not have to use Laintas supply: on the Activation page you can hand Laintas your own model provider keys, and Helpwo, Laintas CLI, Scene and site chat will use them in the priority you set.

怎样启用

• 第一步，打开激活页，点击「添加 key」，选择供应商并填写 key；如果要修改显示名称或接口地址，先展开「修改名称或地址」。
• 第二步，点击「验证并添加」。保存前，系统会用这个 key 真实连接一次供应商；连接不通时不会保存。
• 第三步，添加成功后检查来源的模型列表，确认需要使用的模型已经开启；再按需要设置「优先级」和「规则」。
• 第四步，回到激活页，打开总开关「激活你的模型」，并确认页面显示「已激活，所有产品开始按你的优先级使用 key」。只添加 key、没有打开这个总开关时，来源虽然已经保存，模型也不会出现在 Helpwo 或其他产品的模型列表里。
• 第五步，打开 Helpwo 的 AI Chat，点击输入框旁的「Model」，再进入「Settings → Model」。启用成功后，模型列表里会出现「Activated」分组；这里显示模型短名称，不带 key/<来源>/ 前缀。

What a source is

A source is one provider account: a base URL, a key, and the models that key can call. When you add one, Laintas detects what each model is for (chat, embeddings, images and so on); if it gets one wrong you can change it, and a switched-off model appears in no product and no priority. Once activated, your models show in every product model list as key/<source>/<model>, in the group labelled Activated. Keys from several providers can be hosted side by side, next to Laintas supply in the same model list — set up once, available in every product.

How your key is stored

Your key is stored on Laintas servers encrypted with AES-256-GCM; the plain key is kept nowhere. The key-encryption key (KEK) that opens it lives only on the gateway and is bound to your account and to this record: a sealed key copied anywhere else opens nothing, and nobody — you included — can recover the original key from its stored form. Only the gateway opens it, in memory, for the moment a call needs it. So even a stolen database does not leak your key. On the Activation page you can see your key in its encrypted form; deleting a source discards its key at once, unrecoverably, and removes it from every priority.

How a call is routed

• Naming key/<source>/<model> sends the call to that source only.
• Naming any other model walks your channel priority from the top: your key serves it when it has that model; a Laintas channel always can.
• Naming no model (auto, or a product default) uses the priority set for that capability when it has one, else the default order; an organisation seat uses the order of the seat.
• The next entry is tried only when this one could not take the call — unreachable, timed out, 5xx, 429, key rejected — or a Laintas channel cannot pay (allowance used up, balance empty). A provider that read the request and refused it (a 400 and the like) answers as it is; the call is not rerouted.
• Switch activation off and everything is as it was before; anything none of your keys can do runs on Laintas exactly as before.

Cost and records

A call on your own key costs nothing at Laintas: it draws no balance and no membership allowance, and it is never kept as experience or training data. Like every other call it is still listed in the console call detail, so you can reconcile it. In a priority, the Membership channel draws only the allowance and credit packs, and the Balance channel only the balance — the two never mix.

Payments

Topping up the balance

The balance is held in US dollars and topped up under Settings → Top up.

Processing fees charged by the payment channel are paid by the payer; checkout shows the exact amount before you pay. If a payment succeeded but the balance did not change, do not pay again — send the order number through Contact and we will reconcile it with the processor.

Payments

Buying and cancelling a membership

Only one membership is active at a time. Upgrading Pro to Gen applies at once for the difference on the days left, keeps your renewal date, and counts this cycle’s usage so far; Gen to Pro takes effect at the next renewal (auto-renewal must be on); buying the same plan again adds 30 days to the end date.

Pausing your allowance

To pay from your balance before the allowance runs out, choose “Pause allowance” under “Manage your subscription” at the bottom of the Pricing page. Resume it from the same place at any time.

1. 1While paused, every call — image and video generation included — is charged to your balance at balance rates; your allowance and credit packs are not used.
2. 2Only use of the allowance is paused, not the membership: renewal goes ahead as usual, the end date is not extended, and allowance left unused this cycle does not carry over.
3. 3If the balance runs short, calls are refused (insufficient_balance); they do not fall back to the allowance.
4. 4When you have selected an organisation seat, the organisation still pays.

Payments

Storage and credit packs

• Storage — members get base storage in every product (the same on any plan); free accounts have none. More can be bought, and each product keeps its own allowance. The base amount and add-on prices are on the pricing page.
• Over the storage limit — only new uploads stop. Nothing is deleted and nothing extra is charged.
• Credit packs — Helpwo, CLI, Scene and every other AI product share one pool of pack credits, and each purchase adds to it. Packs are drawn once the plan allowance or the 5-hour limit is reached, before the balance, and are not affected by the 5-hour limit or the "use balance once the allowance runs out" switch.
• Quota reset cards — reset membership allowances only (the 5-hour and monthly allowances) and credit-pack usage, never money. Cards wait under Allowance in the console and you choose when to use one; it first lists exactly what goes back to zero, and a card whose allowances are all still unused is kept rather than spent. They work while a membership is active. Three sources: "Lift the 5-hour limit" in Laintas Market ($1, one-time, resets the 5-hour allowance only, monthly unchanged); one 5-hour card after a stretch (5 hours by default) without using the plan allowance, holding at most one; and cards issued by Laintas.
• Two ways to buy — packs bought on Laintas Market are paid from the balance and each runs for its own 30 days, with optional auto-renew; packs added to a membership from a product’s settings are charged on the membership renewal date, and after cancelling, the month already paid for runs out first.

Payments

Refunds

The Billing and refund policy is authoritative; these are the essentials.

• Whether you topped up with PayPal, WeChat Pay, a card or crypto, the unused balance can be refunded from Settings → Refunds. Consumed balance is not refunded, and memberships and add-ons generally lack discretionary personal-reason refunds; non-delivery, billing errors and statutory exceptions remain.
• Before you submit, the page lists the refundable balance, each deduction and the amount sent back, and shows the refund terms; you read them to the end and tick to accept.
• Deductions: the processing fee listed separately at checkout is not refunded; card top-ups are refunded only as a whole (none of it used), with their fee and tax; crypto refunds deduct the on-chain fee the payout actually costs (a reference is shown when you apply; the actual fee and transaction hash come with the completion notice), are sent as USDC/USDT to an address you control, and need the transaction hash of your original payment.
• Windows: PayPal and card, 180 days from payment; WeChat Pay and crypto, 365 days.
• Each account can submit one request every 7 days, with a reason. If nothing was used since the top-up was credited, non-crypto refunds are processed on submission; otherwise a person reviews it, usually within 1–3 business days, and the amount is held meanwhile.
• Every outcome comes by inbox message and email with the case number, the clause and the amounts; once decided, a printable refund receipt is on the Refunds page. For a double charge or a payment that never arrived, contact us.
• Refund requests are not accepted while a payment dispute is open on the account.

Help

Billing refusals

When a call is refused for a billing reason, the product shows one of these codes. In every one of these cases nothing was charged.

Help

Contact and policies

• Account, billing and refund questions: Contact. Including your account email and order number speeds things up.
• Notices: a badge on your header avatar means unread inbox messages; important billing notices are emailed as well.
• Terms of service · Privacy · Billing and refund policy

For questions about using a product, start with that product’s own documentation.