Your plan includes a set number of units, and the Billing page tracks how many you have used in the current cycle. This article explains what a unit is, exactly how voice and text usage are counted, how the billing cycle works, and what happens when you go over your included units.
What a unit is
A unit is how Newo.ai measures the work your AI Employee does. There is one unit balance, and both voice and text usage draw from it. As a rough guide — the version shown on the pricing page — one unit is about one voice call or about 30 text messages. The precise billing rules are below.
How units are counted
Voice sessions:
Short sessions (under 30 seconds) or voicemail: 0.2 units.
Standard sessions (30 seconds to 3 minutes): 1 unit.
Extended sessions (over 3 minutes): billed in 3-minute increments — 3–6 minutes is 2 units, 6–9 minutes is 3 units, 9–12 minutes is 4 units, and so on.
Text sessions:
Standard sessions (a continuous back-and-forth within 15 conversation turns): 0.5 units.
Longer conversations: an additional 0.5 units for every 15 agent messages, or part thereof.
You can see these rules in the product too — open Manage Subscription from the Billing page and read the What is a unit? section.
The billing cycle
Usage is measured per billing cycle. Each cycle runs for one month from your billing date — for example, the 10th of one month to the 9th of the next. Your included units reset at the start of each new cycle.
Reading the Usage card
The Units Usage in Current Cycle card on the Billing page shows your consumption for the current cycle, with the cycle's date range in its title. Its subtitle states the basis — audio and text units per day, cumulative total, and how many units are included on your plan.
The included figure is your plan's per-cycle allowance, so it reads 200 included on AI Receptionist and 0 included on Pay As You Go. The Pay As You Go free units are a one-time grant to new accounts rather than a monthly allowance, which is why they do not appear here. Before you choose a plan, the card is titled simply Units Usage, with no cycle range.
Four totals sit above the graph:
Units (Voice Sessions)
Units (Text Sessions)
All Units — voice plus text
Overage Units — usage beyond your included allowance
The line graph plots usage across the cycle so you can see how quickly you are drawing down your units. If nothing has been used yet, the card reads No units spent in this period.
Overage
If you use more units than your plan includes, the extra units are billed at your plan's per-unit overage rate. To reduce overage, move to a plan with a higher included-unit allowance — see Plans and pricing.
When overage is charged
Overage is not always charged at the same moment:
Pay As You Go — overage is charged automatically during the cycle, as described below, rather than all at once at the end.
AI Receptionist — overage is charged at the end of the billing cycle. Your first invoice of a new cycle covers the new cycle's subscription fee plus any overage carried over from the cycle just ended.
On Pay As You Go, your card is charged in three steps:
Your first billable unit is charged on its own, once in the lifetime of the account. On a new account, that is unit 51 — the first unit after the 50 free units. On an existing account, it is unit 1.
Every 50 billable units after that are charged as a block, each time another 50 build up since the last charge — $87.50 at $1.75 per unit.
At the end of each billing cycle, any units used since the last charge — fewer than 50 — are charged, so every new cycle starts with nothing owed.
For example, a new account that uses 130 units in its first cycle is charged three times:
When | Units charged | Amount |
At unit 51 | 1 (unit 51) | $1.75 |
At unit 101 | 50 (units 52–101) | $87.50 |
At the end of the cycle | 29 (units 102–130) | $50.75 |
The first 50 units are free, so the account pays for 80 units in total — $140.00.
Every charge generates an invoice, which is emailed to your billing address. Before the charge happens, the Next Billing section of the Subscription card previews it as Estimated Overage Amount and Estimated Payment.
Note: The estimate can move until the charge is taken, because usage keeps accruing. Your invoice is the final figure.
If a payment fails
While a payment is unresolved, your AI Employee is limited to a reduced number of sessions per day before it is blocked entirely. See What happens if a payment fails.
Trace usage back to sessions
The unit totals link to the underlying conversations. Select a unit total to open the Sessions page filtered to the sessions that produced that usage, so you can see exactly which conversations consumed your units.