Pricing
Your first problem is free once you have added credit
Once you have bought at least $10 of credit in total (paid and not refunded; free or promotional credit does not count), your first problem is free, for up to 10 of your texts. It is free once per number. Internet (VoIP) phone numbers and some other line types do not get a free problem; mobile and landline numbers do. Before you reach $10, each text is charged at the price below, and if you have no credit we text you a payment link.
Free safety help, for everyone
Our scam emergency steps (stop, hang up, do not pay, and official contacts) are free for everyone, at most once every 24 hours per number. Crisis contacts (988 and 911) are always free. After the scam steps, follow-up replies about the scam are free up to 3 per 30 days, or 10 per 30 days once you have bought $10 of credit. After that they cost the normal price per text. We never send a payment link inside a scam reply. If you have no credit left for follow-ups, you get a short free reminder of the safety steps (at most once every 24 hours), never silence.
Each text
Each exchange costs our loaded cost plus 13%:
price = our metered cost x 1.12 x 1.13 (that is, our metered cost x 1.266)
Our metered cost is what Twilio and the phone carriers charge us to receive your texts and send our replies, plus what Anthropic charges us for the AI, measured for each exchange. We estimate it at about 6 to 8 cents for a plain text, so a text costs you about 8 to 10 cents. A text with a photo costs more.
What a text costs depends on your question. For each one, we use the least costly AI that answers it well, and the saving goes to you.
The 12% overhead covers our fixed monthly costs (about $12 a month) and our free scam and crisis help. Our books today are an estimate: scam and crisis help is about 5% of texts. We recalculate the overhead each quarter from our ledger and post it here with how we got it. A change is a price change, and we give the 7 to 30 days' notice the terms require.
Adding credit
You add credit with a card, in any amount from $5 to $100 in $5 steps. You get the full amount as credit. On top of it you pay a 3% service fee and the card fee our card processor, Stripe, charges us (2.9% plus 30 cents of what you pay). Sales tax is $0.00 today. Checkout shows all four lines before you pay.
The total is the smallest amount that leaves your full credit plus the 3% after Stripe's fee. For example, $10.00 of credit costs $10.92: $10.00 credit + $0.30 service fee + $0.62 card fee + $0.00 sales tax.
| Credit | Service fee (3%) | Card fee | Sales tax | You pay |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $5.00 | $0.15 | $0.46 | $0.00 | $5.61 |
| $10.00 | $0.30 | $0.62 | $0.00 | $10.92 |
| $25.00 | $0.75 | $1.08 | $0.00 | $26.83 |
| $50.00 | $1.50 | $1.85 | $0.00 | $53.35 |
| $100.00 | $3.00 | $3.39 | $0.00 | $106.39 |
Refunds
Credit never expires. Unused paid credit can be refunded to the card that paid, minus any refund fee our card processor charges (none today). The service fee and the card fee are not refunded: Stripe keeps its fee on a refunded payment.
The line is not answering texts yet. Before it does, this page will list the exact per-text and per-AI rates we charge from. Each month after that, we will post how our charges compared with our real bills.
Full rules: Terms, sections 5 to 10.