You pay for the work, not for a seat.
No seats, no tiers, no subscription. A project’s wallet holds a dollar balance, every operation draws against it, and a week that runs nothing costs nothing.
Every new account starts with $5 and no card — enough for an artist on the board and the whole file on them.
The meter
A dossier costs thirty-three cents.
Measured on this board rather than estimated: an artist scouted, ranked and evidenced runs about a dime, a scored briefing twenty cents, a question in Comms two. A full Command Chain — scout, triage, files, two rounds of judgement and three field reports — came to $9.59 end to end.
Medians read off the real billing ledger — 10,430 metered events, $69.67 of actual spend.
The lines
Five things can charge you.
These are the app's own metered categories — the same five the Usage screen breaks spend down by. All five are listed because that is the argument: this is the entire surface, so nothing is bundled and nothing arrives later.
Every reasoning, judging, scoring, listening and writing step, charged on what the run actually consumed rather than on a bundle.
per tokenOpen-web search and page extraction, priced per request and per page pulled.
per query · per pageProfile, post and comment collection where no API will give it up. Priced per item returned.
per itemDeliverability checks on the contact routes found for you.
per addressArtwork and avatars held for the board.
per objectShe says what something will cost before she launches it.
The wallet is checked before work is admitted, and Usage shows what the run came to once it landed. A cheap question costs cents; a wide chain over a real cohort is a real spend.
Questions
What people ask before they start.
The answers are the same ones the code gives; where a figure is involved, the table above is the source rather than this paragraph.
Is there a subscription?
No. There are no seats, no tiers and no plan to choose. A project’s wallet holds a dollar balance, every operation draws against it, and a week that runs nothing costs nothing. Adding a second person to a board does not change the bill.
What does it cost to start?
Nothing. Every new account gets $5 of credit and no card is asked for. That is enough to put an artist on the board, compile the file on them and read it. The grant is once per person, not once per project.
What happens when the balance runs out?
The next operation is refused before it starts, rather than stopping half way through and leaving a partial file. Top up any amount from $5, or set an auto-reload with a monthly ceiling. Work already running is not interrupted.
What can actually charge me?
Five things, and the table above is all of them: model tokens, open-web search and page extraction, scrapers where no API exists, contact verification, and stored artwork. Nothing is bundled and nothing arrives later.
How is a scout priced if it returns seventy candidates?
By the run, not by the candidate. A scout works its brief across the open web and files a ranked slate; you pay for the work it did, and the per-artist figure above is that run divided by what it filed.
Where do these numbers come from?
A script reads the real billing ledger and reports the median for each kind of operation, with the number of runs behind it. They are measurements, not estimates, and the ones resting on a thin sample say so. A stranger should be able to check them, which is the only reason to publish them at all.
Attribution
Spend you can trace to a run.
An unexpected number should always have somewhere to point. Every debit carries the operation and the category behind it.
It reads before it spends
ATHENA checks what is already filed before starting expensive research, and reuses a saved dossier, briefing or listening pass rather than paying for it twice.
Free where it can be
Ranking on evidence a scout already gathered costs nothing. A model runs when there is a judgement to make, not to move a row.
Topping up
Add credit when you want it.
A checkout, not a plan change. Nothing to upgrade, nothing to cancel, and an unused balance just sits there.
Start with one project.
Create the board, spend the five dollars, and see what comes back before you put a card anywhere near it.