Monitoring Credits Overview
Still using processing units? Find the legacy processing units docs here.
Monitoring Credits are the single unit for measuring usage across Planet Insights Platform. One balance covers everything you do: ordering imagery, streaming tiles, running platform tools, processing data, and storing results.
Usage is additive. A workflow that orders imagery, clips it, and runs an analysis adds up the usage of each step, and you use credits only for what you consume.
Monitoring Credits apply across the standard core packages (Planet Insights Flex, Premium, and Reserved) as well as specialized products and workflows.
Monthly and Annual Monitoring Credits
Monitoring Credits products are distinguished by their reset cycle.
- Monthly Monitoring Credits: These reset on the first day of each calendar month. Unused monthly credits do not roll over.
- Annual Monitoring Credits: These expire twelve (12) months after purchase, or upon contract end, whichever occurs first. They can be purchased at any time during a contract period.
A workspace may hold both credit types at the same time. Consumption is drawn from monthly Monitoring Credits first and from annual Monitoring Credits thereafter, so that recurring credits are used before they expire.
Imagery Access
Data Access and Licensing Definitions
- 30-Day Scenes are PlanetScope scenes which have an acquisition date 30 days or later from the time you view or order them.
- 5-Day Scenes are PlanetScope scenes which have an acquisition date 5 days to 30 days from the time you view or order them.
- Next-Day Scenes are PlanetScope scenes which have an acquisition time 18 hours to 5 days from the time you view or order them.
- Near Real-Time Scenes (0-18 hrs) are PlanetScope scenes which are provided as soon as they are published, up to 18 hours.
- Streaming License is the amount used to stream one tile from the tile services API.
- Ordering License is the action of requesting PlanetScope data to be downloaded, delivered to cloud storage, or sent to a data collection through the Data, Orders, or Subscriptions API. Credit charges use a 1 sq km minimum per delivered asset (0.01 sq km for Planet Agriculture). See Clip Tool: to learn how asset clipping affects credit usage.
Ordering Imagery (credits used per sq km)
Usage depends on data recency: fresher imagery uses more credits. The charge is per image, based on the actual recency of that image at delivery. For example, a forward-fill subscription due to receive a near real-time image that is delivered 36 hours after acquisition is charged at the Next-Day rate.
| Scenes / Mosaics | Insights Flex | Insights Premium | Insights Reserved | Planet Agriculture |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30-Day Scenes | 50 | 25 | 25 | 0 |
| 5-Day+ Scenes | 100 | 50 | 50 | 0 |
| Next-Day Scenes | 225 | 100 | 100 | 0 |
| Near Real-Time Scenes | 450 | — | 225 | — |
| Quarterly Visual & Surface Reflectance Mosaics | — | 25 | 25 | — |
| Monthly Visual & Surface Reflectance Mosaics | — | 25 | 25 | — |
| Bi-Weekly Visual & Surface Reflectance Mosaics | — | 50 | 50 | — |
| Weekly Visual & Surface Reflectance Mosaics | — | 50 | 50 | — |
| 2 Years and Older Archive | — | — | — | 25 |
Streaming Imagery (credits used per tile)
Streaming a tile uses the streaming license below plus the Scene Tile Streaming amount of 1 credit per tile.
| Scenes / Mosaics | Insights Flex | Insights Premium | Insights Reserved | Planet Agriculture |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30-Day+ Scenes | 7 | 0 | 0 | |
| 5-Day+ Scenes | 14 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Next-Day Scenes | 100 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Near Real-Time Scenes | 150 | — | 0 | — |
| Global Quarterly Visual Mosaics | 7 | 0 | 0 | — |
| Global Monthly Visual Mosaics | 7 | 0 | 0 | — |
Three different meters use the word "tile," so check which one your request hits:
- Scene tiles from the tile services API: the streaming license above, plus 1 credit per tile.
- Mosaic tiles: 0.1 to 0.8 credits per tile, depending on product (see Mosaic Actions).
- Data collection tiles streamed via the Processing or OGC APIs: metered by pixels processed, roughly 0.0917 credits for a standard 512 × 512 px true-color tile (see Data Collection Usage).
Platform Tools and Infrastructure
Ordering Tools
For tool definitions and execution parameters, refer directly to the Orders API Tools Reference.
| Feature / Action | Credits used | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Clip | 0.09 | Per input item |
| Band Math | 0.18 | Per input item |
| Composite | 0.18 | Per input item |
| Harmonization | 0.18 | Per input item |
| Reproject | 0.18 | Per input item |
| TOAR | 0.18 | Per input item |
| Merge | 0.9 | Per input quad |
| Co-register | 1.65 | Per input item |
| File Format | 0 | Per input item |
Mosaic Actions
| Mosaic Action / Feature | Visual | Surface Reflectance 4-Band | Surface Reflectance 8-Band | SuperRes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tile Streaming (Monitoring Credits per tile) | 0.1 | 0.4 | 0.8 | 0.1 |
| Quarterly & Monthly Quad Generation (Monitoring Credits per quad) | 0 | 45 | 60 | 40* |
| Bi-Weekly & Weekly Quad Generation (Monitoring Credits per quad) | 15 | 45 | 60 | 40* |
*Note: No SuperRes add-on charge is applied under Mosaics SuperRes Reserved plans.
Activation, Delivery, and Storage
| Feature / Action | Credits used | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Scene Tile Streaming | 1 | Per tile, in addition to the streaming license |
| Data Activation | 1.83 | Per asset, charged once per 24-hour window |
| Cloud Delivery (egress) | 18 | Per GB downloaded or delivered to third-party cloud storage |
| Delivery to Data Collections | 0 | Delivery to data collections on the platform consumes no credits |
| Storage | 2.48 | Per GB per month, for all data stored in data collections |
Data Activation is the required step to retrieve an image from the archive and make it available for use.
Data Collection Usage
Once your data is delivered to a data collection, you can access it over web applications and APIs to view and analyze:
- Stream the imagery via OGC services
- Run analysis to perform band math or zonal statistics
- Access it via APIs to integrate into pipelines or applications.
Whether you are streaming true-color imagery or running an analysis, such as NDVI, change-detection, or zonal statistics, usage is proportional to the number of pixels used. That naturally accounts for the area, the number of dates (time slices), and the number of spectral bands in your request. A larger area, more dates, or additional spectral bands will all increase usage in direct proportion.
Some specific operations will add to that baseline such as data fusion, accelerated hardware for SuperRes, or Sentinel-1 pre-processing.
The full list of adjustment factors, the equation, and per-API worked examples can be found on the Data Collection usage details page.
Below are example estimates for common use cases. Actual usage varies with your exact request inputs. See Example calculations for more details on how each figure is worked out.
| Example | Usage |
|---|---|
| Streaming 100 true color (RGB) tiles (512 × 512 px) | ~9 credits |
| Computing monthly NDVI zonal statistics over 1 sq km of PlanetScope scenes | ~1.6 credits |
| Generating SuperRes images over 1 sq km of PlanetScope scenes | ~12 credits |
Calculating Credit Usage: Example
This example assumes Planet Insights Premium (Next-Day tier) and a reserved 10 sq km area of interest. The workflow assesses crop damage over a single day: review the area, order two captures from different dates for a before-and-after comparison, and run an analysis.
| Action | How it is calculated | Monitoring Credits |
|---|---|---|
| Stream 30 tiles to review the AOI | Streaming license (within AOI): included + Scene Tile Streaming: 30 × 1 | 30 |
| Order today's capture (Next-Day), clipped to the 10 sq km AOI | 10 sq km × 100 | 1000 |
| Order a 6-day-old capture (5-Day tier) for comparison, clipped to the 10 sq km AOI | 10 sq km × 50 | 500 |
| Clip (2 assets) | 2 × 0.09 | 0.18 |
| Data activation (2 assets) | 2 × 1.83 | 3.66 |
| Total | 1,533.84 |
Tracking Your Usage
Your workspace's Usage page shows credits used, credits remaining, and your reset date. For request-by-request detail, every successful API response includes a header reporting exactly what that request used.
The Usage Dashboard and Reporting
The Usage tab within the workspace provides a comprehensive overview of your Monitoring Credit consumption.
- Monitoring Credits Usage Bar: tracks your monthly and annual usage against your allocated quota, displaying credits used, remaining, and recurring allocation, along with reset dates.
- Detailed Breakdown: Shows the specific values for total credits used, credits remaining, and recurring credits allocated for the next period.
- Reporting: Downloadable daily and monthly reports itemize usage by action (for example, License Download (Next-Day): 6000, Clipping: 0.27, Activation: 5.49). Each event carries an Event ID and a Workspace ID, so every charge traces back to the action that produced it. To query a charge, record its Event ID from the report and contact Planet Support.
- Statistics Page: Presents consumption trends over time and by service.
Proactive Notifications
You will receive both in-platform notifications and email notifications when your consumption reaches the following milestones, so you can purchase additional credits before work is interrupted:
- 50% of your allocated quota.
- 90% of your allocated quota.
- 100% (Quota exhausted).
Quota Enforcement
Monitoring Credits are enforced without an overage buffer. When a credit balance reaches zero, the following restrictions apply:
- Order Creation: New orders submitted via the API will be rejected with a 403 Forbidden response.
- Tile Streaming: Tile streaming requests will return watermarked tiles.
- Subscriptions: All active subscriptions will be moved to a Suspended state and delivery will pause. New subscription creation requests will be rejected with a 403 Forbidden response.
- Analysis: Access to Analysis UIs and APIs will be restricted.
To restore full access and resume ordering, streaming, subscribing, and analysis, you must increase your credit balance. A balance may be restored by purchasing additional credits, upgrading the plan, or waiting for the monthly reset on the first of the month.
Once your credit balance is restored, you can manually reactivate your subscriptions. For detailed steps, see the documentation on subscriptions suspension.