Patsnap's Credit System Guide

Note: Patsnap is currently releasing these changes. Please note some of the features may be unreleased at the time of the creation of this guide. If you're unsure about any of these details, please feel free to reach out to your Account Manager or raise a ticket with our Product Support teamhere. 

Patsnap Credits give your organisation a single, flexible way to pay for AI -powered workflows, agents and API/MCP calls across the platform – instead of buying credits for every capability separately.

Expand the sections below to see the nuances of how credits work

• Under the new model, credits are purchased and held at the account/company level – not assigned to individual users. There’s no personal credit balance to track or top up.

  What this means for you:
  Everyone with access draws from the same shared pool. This removes the admin overhead of managing credits person-by-person, and means adding a new team member doesn’t require a separate allocation – they simply draw from the pool your organization already has.

  Example:

  A large enterprise with IP, R&D, and legal teams can let all three draw from one pool rather than juggling separate balances. 

   

  Coming soon: If your organization has multiple subsidiaries or business units, credits will also be able to be allocated across them – Admin users can configure this in the admin portal.

• Credits and access are two separate things. Buying a credit package doesn’t automatically unlock every agent or feature for every user – access to a given package, feature, or agent is still granted by your account admin.

  What this means for you:
  Before a user can spend credits on a specific agent or workflow, an admin needs to provision that user for the relevant package via the Credits setup page in the Admin Portal. Different users on the same account can be configured with access to different tools.

  Example:

  If your organization has access to Eureka IP Search agents, an admin could give some users access to FTO Search while limiting others to Novelty Search only – both draw from the same credit pool, but access is controlled individually.

• Credit consumption isn’t one-size-fits-all. Most individual agents and workflows use a fixed number of credits per run, grouped roughly into bands based on complexity. You can see a list of the credit consumption of some of our main agents in this article: Agent Credit Information

  Insight unlocked:
  Eureka Hiro (the main search/orchestration experience) works differently – it doesn’t have one fixed cost. It interprets your question, breaks it into steps, and may call on multiple agents or data sources to answer it, so its credit cost scales with the complexity of the request. On average, a Eureka Hiro question costs 500–1,000 credits, but a complex, multi-step request can cost more. To help absorb this variability, Patsnap adds an extra 20% credit allowance on top of standard packages.

  Example:

  Asking Eureka Hiro a quick factual question will typically consume far fewer credits than asking it to run a multi-step competitive analysis that pulls from several data sources and agents behind the scenes. Exact, current costs for any agent are always visible in-product and in the Admin Portal, since these can be refined over time.

• To help avoid one heavy user – or one busy day – burning through a credit pool unexpectedly, admins can configure daily credit limits at two levels.

  What this means for you:
  Account-level limits cap the maximum credits the whole organization can consume in a day, while user-level limits cap what an individual can consume – and a user-specific limit can override the company default.

  Example:

  An admin might set a company-wide daily cap to protect the overall budget, while giving a smaller, stricter daily limit to occasional users and a higher one to power users who rely on using credits every day.

• Credit usage isn’t a black box. The Admin Portal provides reporting on how your organization’s credits are being consumed.

  What this means for you:
  Admins can review credit top-up history, consumption records, and user-level activity, including whether credit-consuming actions succeeded or failed. This makes it easier to understand which teams or workflows are driving usage and to plan ahead of renewal.

   

• Credits are tied to your contract term. Any credits your organization hasn’t used by the end of the term expire – they don’t carry over into the next contract year, and they aren’t refunded.

  Plan your usage across the term:
  Because unused credits are lost at term end rather than banked, it’s worth reviewing consumption regularly (via the Admin Portal). If your usage is trending higher than expected, you can adjust your package at renewal or purchase an additional batch of credits by speaking with your Account Manager.

  Topping up:

  If you need more credits mid-term, top-up packages are available at any time.

Key Takeaways

Patsnap Credits are designed to be flexible, but that flexibility comes with a few rules worth knowing up front:

• Credits are shared at the account level, but access to specific agents and packages is still controlled individually by your admin.
• Most agents use a fixed credit cost, but usage of Eureka Hiro cost varies with the complexity of your question.
• Admins have tools – daily limits and usage reporting – to keep consumption predictable and visible.
• Unused credits expire at the end of your contract term and don't roll over, so plan usage across the full term rather than saving credits for later.

For help estimating how many credits your team needs, understanding your current package, or confirming whether your account has moved to the new Credit model, please contact your Patsnap representative – they can also walk you through the Admin Portal’s usage and reporting views.