Why we don't do credits

Almost every AI website builder charges by the credit. Open the pricing page of any of them and you'll find a number of "credits" attached to a monthly fee, with the strong implication that you should spend them carefully.

We think that's the wrong shape for a creative tool, and it's worth explaining why — including the part where credits genuinely do solve a real problem.

What credits are actually for

Every time an AI builds or edits a site, it costs the company running it real money. That cost varies enormously between a light user and someone iterating all day. Credits pass that variability straight through to the customer: use more, pay more. From a business point of view, it's tidy and safe.

The problem is what it does to you

The trouble is that creative work is iterative by nature. You try something, you don't like it, you try again. That's not waste — that's the process. But when every attempt costs a visible unit, the process starts to feel expensive.

People describe it as a kind of low-level anxiety: hesitating before asking for a change, wondering whether it's worth a retry, watching a number drop when a build doesn't come out right. The worst version is when a failed or buggy generation still costs you — you're paying for the tool's mistake.

What we do instead

Lintel is a flat monthly price with a generous build allowance that refreshes every 5 hours, within a monthly total. Most people never come close to the limit. There's no meter ticking down while you think, and retries during normal building aren't punished.

If someone genuinely does need more before the refresh, they can add a top-up, and top-up builds never expire and roll over month to month.

The honest trade-off

Flat pricing means we carry the variability instead of you. That only works if the allowance is set thoughtfully, which is why there are limits at all — builds per 5 hours, within a monthly total — rather than a promise of literal infinity. We'd rather be straightforward about a generous ceiling than advertise "unlimited" and quietly throttle people.

The result is a price you can predict, and a tool you can experiment with freely. That's the whole idea.