---
title: "Limits and billing"
description: "Edge Assist's free allowance of 250 questions per site, per-question pricing, pay-as-you-go billing and every operational limit in one place."
url: "https://edge.network/docs/assist/limits-and-billing"
section: "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.

## 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](/docs/assist/caching) 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](/assist/pricing).

## 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](/console/billing) (pay-as-you-go activates with it) or top up an empty balance.

> [!NOTE]
> Your site's Overview page in Control shows this month's usage against the cap, with the same warning thresholds your bill sees.

## 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).

## Next steps

- [Pricing](/assist/pricing) — Worked examples for real sites
- [Getting started](/docs/assist/getting-started) — Live in under ten minutes