Credits & Royalties Explained
How credits are spent, how plans change your royalty rate, and how marketplace earnings are split.
Icora Docs
Finance & Support
Icora has two separate systems you should keep distinct: credits, which power paid actions on the platform, and royalties, which determine how much of a paid marketplace sale goes back to the creator.
Credits: What They Are For
| Action | Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Generate Icon | 1 Credit | Charged per generation attempt. |
| Vectorize | 1 Credit | Used for high-fidelity raster-to-vector conversion. |
| Background Removal | 1 Credit | Applied when using the AI-powered cleanup flow. |
| Export | Free | Exporting owned assets does not consume credits. |
How You Get Credits
- Starter receives 200 bonus credits per month.
- Pro receives 800 bonus credits per month in the current tier configuration.
- One-time top-up: You can buy a 250-credit pack for $15.
- Marketplace earnings: Sales, remix fees, and lineage payouts are credited back to your account as spendable credits.
Warning
Plan and pricing copy can drift from implementation over time. The current app logic uses 200 monthly credits for Starter and 800 for Pro.
How Monthly Credit Grants Work
Monthly subscription credits are awarded server-side by a scheduled cron flow. The Worker schedule runs daily at 06:00 UTC and calls the monthly credits route, which checks paid users and grants their plan bonus once per calendar month.
- Eligible tiers: Starter and Pro.
- Grant timing: The scheduler runs every day, but each user is awarded at most once per month.
- Duplicate protection: Icora stores the award timestamp in
lastMonthlyBonusand skips users who already received credits in the current month. - Audit trail: Every successful grant writes a
monthly_bonustransaction entry.
Royalty Rates by Plan
| Plan | Projects | Market Listings | Royalty Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | 3 | 1 | 70% |
| Starter | 50 | 25 | 80% |
| Pro | Unlimited | Unlimited | 85% |
How a Marketplace Sale Is Split
For a paid sale, Icora first looks up the seller's current plan and applies that royalty rate to the sale price. That creates the creator pool. If the listing is a remix with lineage, part of that creator pool can be shared with upstream creators; otherwise the seller keeps the full creator pool.
- Primary payout: The seller receives their royalty-based share of the sale price.
- Lineage payouts: For remixed listings, Icora can reserve part of the creator pool for up to 3 upstream marketplace items.
- Free downloads: Free items increase download counts but do not generate paid royalties.
- Remix fees: If you set a remix fee, that fee is paid directly when another user remixes your item.
Pro Tip
Your publish modal currently estimates earnings with a simple 70% rule of thumb, but the actual payout logic uses your live tier rate: 70%, 80%, or 85%.
Remix Fees and Republishing
When you publish a project, you can allow paid remixing, free remixing, or no remixing. Paid remixing lets you set a remix fee in credits. You can also decide whether resulting remixes stay private or may be republished to the marketplace.
Payouts
Icora tracks creator earnings separately from subscription credits so cron-awarded monthly bonuses cannot be cashed out as marketplace revenue. Payout requests use your available earnings balance, and the minimum payout threshold shown in the app FAQ is $50.
If you are evaluating whether to upgrade, the practical math is simple: higher tiers do not just add credits, they also raise your royalty rate and publishing capacity.
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