Topping up
How to add money to your Wallet, what the three amounts are, what happens the first time, and what to do if checkout fails.
You add money to your Wallet whenever you like, in one of three amounts, through a secure checkout page. There is nothing to set up first and nothing to cancel later — Else has no subscription, so a top-up is a one-off payment and never a recurring one.
Else also never tops up on your behalf. Money enters your Wallet only when you start a top-up yourself.
Where the Wallet is
Section titled “Where the Wallet is”Two ways in:
- Go to /wallet directly.
- Or open Settings → Money and data → Wallet, described there as “Your balance, top-ups and receipts”, and press Open.
The page shows your Balance — what is available to spend right now — above the three top-up options.
The three amounts
Section titled “The three amounts”| Amount | |
|---|---|
| $5 | |
| $20 | most popular |
| $100 | for heavy use — same fair price |
These are amounts of money you are adding, not prices for anything. How much work a given amount buys depends entirely on which model runs, and that varies by more than a hundredfold across the models you can pick — so we deliberately do not translate a top-up into “about N tasks”. Model prices gives you the actual rates, and every run’s receipt gives you the actual amount.
The $100 option costs no more per dollar than the $5 one. There is no volume
discount and no penalty for topping up small.
What happens when you press Continue
Section titled “What happens when you press Continue”Choosing an amount opens a short confirmation, then:
- You press Continue to checkout.
- Else takes you to a secure checkout page to complete the payment.
- When you finish, you come back to the Wallet with a confirmation: “Thanks — your payment is on its way. It may take a minute to show up.”
Read that last sentence literally. The balance is not always updated the instant you return. The payment and the crediting of your Wallet are separate steps, and the second can lag the first by a short while. If the number has not moved yet, reload the page in a minute rather than paying again.
If you back out instead, you return to “Checkout was cancelled. No charge was made.”
The first time you top up
Section titled “The first time you top up”Nothing extra to do. The first top-up opens your Wallet account as part of the same action — there is no separate setup step, no form, and no waiting for approval. You choose an amount and go to checkout exactly as you would the second time.
If something goes wrong
Section titled “If something goes wrong”Every failure is reported in plain language rather than an error code. The ones you may see:
| What you see | What it means |
|---|---|
| That amount isn’t valid. Please try one of the options above. | The amount was rejected. Pick one of the three options. |
| We couldn’t set up your wallet just now. Please try again in a moment. | Your Wallet account could not be opened this time. This is usually transient — try again shortly. |
| Payments aren’t available right now. Please try again shortly. | Payments are temporarily unavailable on our side. Nothing was charged. |
| A top-up for a different amount is already in progress. Please finish or wait for that one first. | You started a top-up for a different amount and have not finished it. Complete or abandon that one first — this exists so you cannot accidentally pay twice. |
| Something went wrong starting checkout. Please try again. | Checkout could not be started. Nothing was charged. |
In every one of these cases you were not charged: the failures all happen before payment, while the checkout is being set up. If you reached the checkout page itself and something failed there, check your Wallet balance before retrying.
About your balance
Section titled “About your balance”It never expires. There is no monthly reset, no use-it-or-lose-it window, and no inactivity charge. Money you put in stays there until work uses it.
There is no refund path. Money already spent on work that ran stays spent, and unused balance cannot currently be withdrawn. We would rather say that here than let you discover it later — see When a run fails.
Because of that, the honest advice is to top up in the amount you actually expect to use rather than pre-loading a large balance, and to keep run limits low while you are still learning what your kind of work costs.
Where to look next
Section titled “Where to look next”- How billing works — what your balance is actually spent on
- Model prices — the rate for every model, and what each tier runs
- Spending limits — where the limit you set is read, and where it is not