Assist
Limits and billing
One billable unit: the answered question. Search is free and unlimited, forever. Every site answers 250 questions free each month; beyond that it's $0.01 per question.
On this page5 sections
How billing works#
- A question = one AI-composed answer. Follow-ups each count as one question. Searches, config fetches, and handoffs are free. Cached answers still count: metering is per question asked.
- 250 free per site per month. No credit card required; the allowance resets on the first of the month.
- Beyond that: $0.01 per question ($10 per 1,000), billed pay-as-you-go from your account’s prepaid balance, using the same machinery as the rest of Edge. Pay-as-you-go is active automatically once you have a card on file, with an optional monthly spend cap if you want a hard ceiling. No plans, no seats, no per-page fees.
- Extended conversations meter at 2× on their deep turns. Longer threads carry more context, which costs more to produce. It’s an optional per-site setting.
Worked examples are on the pricing page.
What happens at the cap#
When a site reaches its monthly allowance (and there’s no pay-as-you-go headroom to continue against), the widget degrades gracefully rather than breaking:
- Instant search keeps working. It’s free and unlimited.
- Ask is paused: the widget shows a capacity notice and stops offering AI answers; the API returns
429 { "error": "monthly-limit" }. - Answering resumes automatically when the month rolls over, or immediately when you add a card in Billing (pay-as-you-go activates with it) or top up an empty balance.
All limits#
| Limit | Value |
|---|---|
| Answered questions (free) | 250 / month / site |
| Question length | 500 characters |
| Questions per conversation | 20 (100 with extended conversations) |
| History window per ask | 6 turns (12 with extended conversations) |
| Pages per site | 500 free · 10,000 paid |
| Chunks per site | 50,000 |
| Search rate limit | 60 / minute / visitor |
| Ask rate limit | 10 / 5 minutes / visitor |
| Handoff rate limit | 3 / hour / visitor |
Paid features#
A site becomes “paid” the moment pay-as-you-go is active on your account, which happens automatically with a card on file, with or without a monthly cap. Paid sites get these features at no extra flat fee:
- Higher ingestion ceiling: 10,000 pages instead of 500.
- White label: name the assistant after your product and remove the “Powered by Edge Assist” badge.
- Extended conversations: longer threads with a deeper memory (metered 2× on deep turns).
- Cache pre-warming: answer likely questions ahead of time, with a review step before anything is spent (each answer meters at the normal rate).
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