Prepaid API tokens: packs from $29, one shared balance

ChefSphere developer billing is prepaid tokens: buy a pack, spend across every module, and keep unused balance instead of chasing opaque monthly overages. Starter is $29 for 200,000 tokens; Growth is $79 for 750,000; Scale is $149 for 2,500,000 in the July 2026 public band. Enterprise from $300 per month covers dedicated limits, custom weights, and volume conversations for heavier marketplace, live, or AI stacks.

This page explains how packs work and why prepaid exists for product backends that span commerce, community, and media—not a single data lookup meter. It is not the multi-module billing deep dive on relative burn weights across surfaces, and it is not the API keys guide on X-API-Key hygiene. Those intents stay separate so searchers get the answer they came for without reading the same essay rewritten across three URLs.

A pack is capacity, not a product silo, so the same balance pays for marketplace checkout, live session access, AI messages, social posts, and catalog reads. You do not rebuy a separate meter when you turn on a second module across the nineteen-module platform surface. That is the core promise: one ledger instead of a stack of disconnected SaaS invoices fighting each other at month end.

Unused tokens stay on your balance while reads stay cheap and writes, media, live, AI, KYC, and checkout cost more on the published weight table. Planning means estimating your mix, not memorizing a hundred SKUs that pretend every call costs the same. If your first month is mostly catalog and auth exploration, Starter is honest; if production mixes commerce, live, and AI, Growth is featured for a reason.

Packs and API keys open through early access after we review your use case. Request access and we contact you when onboarding opens for your product, stack, and priority modules. We prioritize teams who are actively building so onboarding capacity stays focused.

Each authenticated call presents an X-API-Key and burns tokens according to operation weight published on the developer pricing page. Catalog read can be one token; AI vision and seller KYC sit near the top of the table because they are expensive and risk-bearing. Model without fake precision about traffic you have not measured yet in a real environment with paying users and real sellers.

Think in scenarios: browse-heavy meal planner, checkout-heavy marketplace, or live-heavy creator app—same packs, different burn curves across the month. When you outgrow packs, enterprise conversations cover custom weights and dedicated limits while staying prepaid-minded. That is still better than opaque surprise invoices arriving after a viral week you did not staff or budget for correctly.

Early access is the gate: tell us product, stack, and which modules you need first so we can review requests with context instead of empty forms. We email when onboarding opens, which keeps keys from scattering into abandoned sandboxes while the rollout finishes. It also lets us prioritize marketplace.

After access, buy a pack starting at $29 for 200,000 tokens and call across modules on the same balance without per-product rebates or silos. Related guides cover API key practice and multi-module burn strategy so finance and engineering share one model. Do that before launch week pressure forces guesswork on pack size and module priority with incomplete information.