Frequently asked questions

Credits & usage

How does the credit system work?

Your use of Posit Assistant is measured in credits, which are denominated in US dollars. Next Edit Suggestions (NES) are unlimited and do not use credits. There are a few numbers you’ll see, and they mean different things. Here’s the full picture:

You get credits in one of two ways:
- Free trial: a one-time allotment of $5 in credits.
- Pro plan ($20/month): includes $15 in credits each month.
Your home page shows your remaining included credits as a percentage. This reflects your one-time trial allotment or your recurring monthly Pro allotment.
When your included credits run out, usage draws from your recharge balance. This is a separate balance, shown in US dollars, that you fund through auto-recharge or a one-time purchase. The system only uses it after your included credits are exhausted.
The token usage indicator inside Posit Assistant is unrelated to billing. It only tracks the context used in your current session. See What does the token usage indicator represent? below.

Note

Credits apply only to Posit Assistant. Next Edit Suggestions (NES) are unlimited, never consume credits, and do not appear in your balance. See Do Next Edit Suggestions use credits? below.

The table below summarizes the three figures you’ll encounter:

What you see	Where it appears	What it measures
Credit balance (%)	Your posit.ai home page	Your remaining included trial or monthly Pro credits
Recharge balance ($)	Your posit.ai home and Billing pages	Purchased or auto-recharge funds, used only after included credits run out
Token usage indicator	Inside a Posit Assistant session	Context used in the current session, not billing or your monthly balance

Is there a usage cap?

Yes, for Posit Assistant. Posit Assistant usage is measured in credits (denominated in US dollars). Free-trial users receive a one-time credit allotment. Once it is used up, continued use of Posit Assistant requires a paid subscription. The Pro plan includes a larger monthly credit allotment, and you can purchase additional credits if you need more. See How does the credit system work? above.

Next Edit Suggestions (NES) are not capped. They are unlimited and do not draw on your credits.

Do Next Edit Suggestions use credits?

No. Next Edit Suggestions (NES) are unlimited and do not consume usage credits. They do not count against your free trial or monthly Pro allotment, they don’t draw on your recharge balance, and they don’t appear in your balance or the account management portal.

Usage credits apply only to your use of Posit Assistant (chat and agentic tasks). If you only use NES, you never consume credits.

How many credits does the free trial include?

The free trial provides a one-time allotment of $5 in credits at the start of the trial period. These credits let you explore and evaluate Posit AI’s capabilities. The free trial is not a recurring allowance and does not refresh.

Warning

Before you upgrade, use your trial credits. Any remaining free-trial credits expire immediately when you upgrade to a paid plan, and they do not roll over. Your monthly Pro allowance takes effect as soon as the upgrade is processed, so we recommend using up your trial credits first.

How are credits included with the Pro plan?

The Pro plan costs $20/month and includes a monthly allotment of $15 worth of credits. Included monthly credits are “use it or lose it” and do not roll over to the next billing cycle. Credit usage is calculated at a 10% premium over model provider rates to help cover infrastructure and service costs.

What factors influence credit consumption?

Because Posit Assistant supports various tasks and models, credits are not consumed at a fixed “per-question” rate. Credit usage depends on:

Complexity of the task: Large data summaries or complex refactoring require more underlying token usage.
Model selection: Premium, high-reasoning models (e.g., Claude Opus) consume credits faster than lightweight, faster models (e.g., Claude Haiku or Gemma 4). See Available models for the full list and relative credit usage.
Response length: The variable nature of LLM outputs means two similar prompts may result in different credit usage.

For guidance on what this means for your monthly costs, see What can I expect to pay? below.

What happens if I run out of credits?

To ensure your workflow is not interrupted, paid users can opt in to Automatic Recharge. Once your monthly allowance is exhausted, this feature automatically adds a pre-defined dollar amount to your account based on a threshold you set. You can optionally set a monthly maximum limit on how much auto-recharge can charge in a given month (between $15 and $500).

Alternatively, you can make a one-time purchase to add funds to your account balance at any time. Note that a one-time purchase is not a prepay option. You need an active Posit AI subscription to use your balance.

Your account displays auto-recharge and one-time purchase funds together as your recharge balance (in USD). This balance is separate from your monthly credits and the system only consumes it after your included credits run out.

Do purchased credits expire?

Yes. Credits in your recharge balance, whether added through auto-recharge or a one-time purchase, are valid for 12 months from the date of purchase. After 12 months, any remaining credits from that purchase expire and Posit removes them from your account.

Your included monthly Pro credits are separate: they do not roll over and reset each billing cycle.

What happens to my recharge balance if I cancel my subscription?

Your recharge balance requires an active Posit AI subscription to use. If your subscription ends, you can no longer use any remaining recharge balance, even if credits remain and have not yet reached their 12-month expiration. We recommend spending down your recharge balance before canceling.

What happens to my remaining free trial credits if I upgrade to a paid plan?

Any remaining free trial credits expire immediately upon upgrading to a paid plan. Your new monthly credit allowance will take effect as soon as the upgrade is processed. To get the most value out of your trial, we recommend using your remaining free credits before upgrading, as they do not roll over to paid tiers.

Where can I check my remaining credits?

You can view your remaining monthly usage credits on the home page of your posit.ai account, shown as a percentage. Your recharge balance appears there as well, in US dollars.

We will proactively send you a notification directly within Posit Assistant if your monthly credit balance is running low.

For a detailed breakdown of token usage over time, see the Usage page.

What does the token usage indicator represent?

The token usage indicator inside Posit Assistant displays the total number of tokens consumed within your current active session. To ensure optimal performance, Posit Assistant automatically compacts your session history before it reaches the 200,000 token limit.

This indicator tracks session-specific context only. It does not reflect your overall monthly usage credits or your recharge balance. For how these different figures relate, see How does the credit system work?.

Billing, payments & refunds

How do I add more credits?

You can add credits from the Billing page in two ways:

One-time purchase: Add a fixed amount to your recharge balance immediately. One-time purchases must be between $20 and $250.
Auto-recharge: Automatically top up your balance whenever it runs low, so your workflow isn’t interrupted.

See the Billing documentation for step-by-step instructions.

How does auto-recharge work?

Auto-recharge is disabled by default. When you enable it on the Billing page, you configure the following:

Balance threshold: when your recharge balance falls below this amount, a recharge is triggered.
Target recharge amount: how much is added to your balance when a recharge occurs.
Monthly recharge limit (optional): a cap on how much auto-recharge can charge in a single billing month. When set, it must be between $15 and $500. Leave it blank for no limit.

Enabling auto-recharge does not change your subscription cost. When triggered, Posit AI charges the card on file for the target amount on a recurring basis. To stop auto-recharge, turn it off on the Billing page.

Is there a limit on how many credits I can buy?

One-time purchases must be between $20 and $250 each.
Auto-recharge lets you set an optional monthly recharge limit to cap how much it can charge in a billing month. When set, it must be between $15 and $500. If you leave the limit blank, there is no cap.

Does my subscription renew automatically?

Yes. The Pro plan renews automatically each month and charges your saved payment method. To stop future renewals, cancel your subscription from the Billing page using Edit plan or payment. When you cancel, you keep Pro access until the end of your current billing cycle, and you are not charged again after that.

If you don’t plan to continue, cancel before your renewal date to avoid the next charge. Canceling your subscription is separate from turning off auto-recharge (see below).

Does turning off auto-recharge cancel my subscription?

No. Posit manages auto-recharge and your Posit AI subscription separately. Turning off auto-recharge only stops the system from adding more funds once your included monthly credits run out. Your underlying Pro subscription remains active and continues to bill on its normal cycle. To cancel your subscription, go to the Billing page and use Edit plan or payment.

I purchased credits (or auto-recharge ran) but my balance hasn’t updated. What can I do?

Balance updates can take a few moments to appear. First, refresh your home page or sign out and back in. If a completed payment still isn’t reflected after a short wait, contact Posit Support with your invoice number and the charge amount and date so we can investigate.

Why do I see more than one charge?

Posit AI can bill you through two separate mechanisms, which appear as distinct line items in your Invoice history:

Monthly Pro subscription: your recurring $20/month charge.
Auto-recharge top-ups: charged each time your recharge balance falls below your threshold.

If auto-recharge is enabled and you use credits quickly, you might see more than one top-up charge in a single month. To limit this, set a monthly recharge limit or turn off auto-recharge. If you see a charge you can’t account for, contact Posit Support with the invoice number.

Can I get a refund?

Posit AI is a usage-based service, and we generally do not provide refunds. Refunds and billing terms are governed by the Posit AI Agreement.

To avoid unexpected charges, you can:

Turn off auto-recharge: this prevents charges beyond your monthly plan. See How does auto-recharge work?.
Set a monthly recharge limit: this caps how much auto-recharge can spend in a billing month.
Cancel before your renewal date: your plan stays active through the end of the current billing cycle. See Does my subscription renew automatically?.

If you believe you were charged in error, for example a duplicate charge, contact Posit Support with your invoice number.

Pricing & plans

What can I expect to pay?

Because credit usage varies with your workflow (see What factors influence credit consumption?), exact monthly costs are difficult to predict. Based on behavior during beta testing, here are some general patterns:

If you…	Typical monthly total
Use only Next Edit Suggestions	Just the $20 Pro plan (NES doesn’t use credits)
Use Posit Assistant occasionally for lightweight data tasks	Often stays within the $20 Pro plan
Use Posit Assistant every day for typical data work	Between $20 and $100, with additional credit purchases
Use Posit Assistant every day with large codebases or datasets	Often $100+, with additional credit purchases

For heavy use, why is Posit AI costing more than I expected?

We hear this often, and it’s usually due to more advanced workflows - such as agentic coding tasks or working with large files - consuming tokens much faster than simple chat. Even a short session with a large codebase loaded as context can consume a meaningful portion of your monthly allotment. You can always check your actual remaining balance at posit.ai. We recommend reviewing your model selection and context practices to get the most from your plan. Also, see What can I do to keep my costs under control? below.

What can I do to keep my costs under control?

To manage your usage effectively:

Select the right model: Use smaller, faster models for simple tasks and reserve high-intensity models (like Claude Opus) for complex architectural or coding problems. See Available models for guidance on choosing.
Monitor context: Be mindful of the size of the files or documentation you are providing as context, as larger contexts increase token usage.
Manage auto-recharge: You can turn auto-recharge on or off, and set a monthly recharge limit (between $15 and $500) to stay within a specific budget.

Can I use my existing Claude Pro or Claude Max subscription with Posit AI?

No, this isn’t currently possible. While flat-rate subscriptions like Claude Pro or Max work on Anthropic’s own products (claude.ai, Claude Code), Anthropic does not currently allow third-party services like Posit AI to draw on those consumer plans. Posit AI is powered by direct API access - a separate pay-as-you-go tier that carries a cost per token processed. We’re actively engaging with AI providers as their partnership models evolve and will update this if that changes.

Why can’t Posit offer an “unlimited” usage plan for a flat monthly fee?

We understand the appeal of flat rates with predictable spend that are common with tools like Claude Code or ChatGPT Plus. The difference is that those plans are currently subsidized at a loss by companies investing heavily to grow their user bases. Posit is an independent company, and we’re powering Posit AI via direct API consumption from Anthropic, and every token has a real cost. We’re actively exploring higher-volume tiers that could offer better value for power users. Your feedback on this directly shapes that work.

Do you offer discounted pricing for students or educators?

We know cost is a real barrier in academic settings, and we take this seriously. While we don’t have an education discount at this time, we are actively exploring how to provide more value to the academic community. Please stay tuned for updates and share your specific use case on the community forum.

General

Why did Posit add AI functionality to RStudio?

Through our work on AI functionality in Positron, we’ve seen firsthand how AI tools can accelerate and improve data science workflows. Posit Assistant brings these AI capabilities into RStudio.

Posit is committed to building tools that produce correct, transparent, and reproducible results. AI assistants are no different. We wanted to build AI functionality within RStudio that is aligned with this stance, bringing RStudio users up to the state-of-the-art while continuing to produce reliable insights, code, and results.

How can these new tools support my work?

Posit Assistant can help with a variety of tasks, including:

Writing and editing code: Have Posit Assistant write code for a specific purpose, or refactor existing code. This includes tasks like writing R packages, creating Shiny apps, and editing code in a Quarto document.
Debugging: Get help identifying and fixing issues in your code.
Exploratory data analysis: Explore your data directly within the chat. Posit Assistant can summarize datasets, check for quality issues, visualize relationships, etc., and will offer suggested next steps at each turn.
Understanding a codebase or set of files: Get explanations of how code works or answers about unfamiliar files.
Creating reports: Generate Quarto documents from your analysis using the /report command.
Collaborating on approaches: Discuss your strategy for your tasks with Posit Assistant, get suggestions for alternatives, or talk through unexpected results.

Next Edit Suggestions (NES) speeds up your coding process by predicting your next edits as you type. Because NES can see your live R or Python session, suggestions are specific to what you’re working on.

How is Posit Assistant different from other coding agents like Claude Code?

While both can be used as coding agents, Posit Assistant is specialized for the data science workflow within RStudio or Positron:

Direct session access: Unlike Claude Code, Posit Assistant has direct access to your live R session out-of-the-box. It can run code directly within RStudio or Positron, see your loaded packages and variables, access console output, and more.
Adaptive interaction style: Working with data involves a variety of tasks, from exploratory data analysis to package creation. Posit Assistant adjusts its behavior depending on the task; for example, asking for more input during exploratory analysis and predictive modeling, but working more autonomously on software engineering tasks with clear goals.
Data-science specific guidance: We designed Posit Assistant to specifically be useful for data analysis tasks, and so it has built-in skills and capabilities for data science tasks, including building Quarto reports and doing predictive modeling.

How is Posit Assistant different from chat interfaces like ChatGPT?

Coding agents that can run code on your machine and see your environment and files are substantially better for coding and data analysis than browser-based chat interfaces.

ChatGPT and similar chat interfaces can answer questions about code, but they operate in isolation. To use them for code, you need to copy-paste code into a browser, get a response, and paste it back. Posit Assistant is embedded directly in your RStudio or Positron IDE and has access to your live R session, so it can run code, see your variables and data, and iterate with you in real time. This means more specific guidance, much quicker feedback loops, and fewer errors.

How can I get the most out of Posit Assistant?

While Posit Assistant is designed to be intuitive, you can unlock its full potential by exploring the official documentation.

Why aren’t Posit Assistant and NES open source?

Posit’s mission is to create free and open-source software for data science, scientific research, and technical communication. Revenue from Posit’s commercial products is what funds this open-source work and makes our business sustainable, and Posit AI is one of those commercial products. As a managed service, it also allows us to tune the experience for high-quality models and maintain reliability for users.

What is the difference between Posit AI, Posit Assistant, and Positron Assistant?

Posit AI, Posit Assistant, and Positron Assistant are related, but distinct.

Name	Description	Status
Posit Assistant	Coding agent available in RStudio and Positron (and more)	Active
Posit AI	Model subscription service	Active
Positron Assistant	Coding agent available in Positron	Active, but planned to be superseded by Posit Assistant in Q3 2026

Privacy & data storage

Which LLM providers does Posit AI rely on?

Posit Assistant supports large language models from Anthropic (Claude) and Google (Gemma 4, an open-weights model hosted by Posit). Posit also hosts a number of specialized LLMs that power NES. For details on each model and when to use it, see Available models.

Do you have a Zero Data Retention policy with the language providers?

We have a Zero Data Retention (ZDR) agreement in place with Anthropic. According to Anthropic:

Zero Data Retention (ZDR) is Anthropic’s commitment to ensuring that customer data submitted through certain API endpoints is not stored after the API response is returned except where needed to comply with law or combat misuse, as outlined in a customer’s arrangements with Anthropic. Subject to these exceptions, when using ZDR-enabled endpoints, your data is processed in real-time and immediately discarded, with no logging or storage of prompts or outputs.

Will Posit use user data collected from Posit AI to train models or improve the service?

At the time of account creation, users can choose to opt in or out of data collection for improving the service.

Opt-in: Posit may use your trace data for up to 5 years to train models and improve the service.
Opt-out: Posit retains basic operational data (not including your prompts or AI responses) for 30 days for service maintenance and support purposes only. This data will not be used to train models or improve the service.

If you wish to change your data collection preference after account creation, you can toggle this setting in the My Settings menu.

Can I use Posit AI behind a corporate firewall?

Yes, but you will need to ask your IT department to add the following IP addresses to your corporate firewall, proxy, or egress allowlist. Once these are permitted, Posit AI should work as expected through Posit Assistant in the RStudio or Positron IDE.

3.128.42.122
18.224.84.135
13.58.113.11

To verify that the IP addresses are reachable, go to Tools > Global Options > Code Suggestions in the RStudio IDE and click Diagnostic. If successful, all services in the Reachability section should return HTTP 200.

Compatibility

Is Posit AI available on Posit Workbench for RStudio Pro or Positron Pro?

Yes, as of the 2026.04 release, Posit AI and Posit Assistant are available in both RStudio Pro and Positron Pro on Workbench.

However, teams using Workbench often bring their own provider.

How is Posit Assistant different from Positron Assistant and Databot?

Posit Assistant is the evolution of everything we learned from building Positron Assistant and Databot.

Databot is deprecated in favor of Posit Assistant. Posit Assistant retains the exploratory data analysis capabilities of Databot, while also being capable of assisting with the full range of data science tasks.

Positron Assistant is still available in Positron, but Posit Assistant will supersede it in Q3 2026.

Is Databot coming to RStudio?

As mentioned above, Databot is deprecated in favor of Posit Assistant. However, Posit Assistant directly builds on the Databot foundation. This means — similar to Databot — Posit Assistant can directly help with exploratory data analysis, such as summarizing datasets, teasing out relationships, and visualizing findings.

Can I use Posit Assistant with my own API key, local models, or a custom cloud provider?

In RStudio

Currently, Posit Assistant in RStudio relies on Posit AI, our managed service. We have tested Posit Assistant extensively with the models we offer and tuned the experience around them. As this is the first time we have had AI Chat/Agent experiences in RStudio, we want to ensure a reliably high-quality experience rather than one that varies depending on the model behind it. Managing Posit AI as a service also allows us to build server-side features.

For enterprise teams that require custom providers or stricter data boundaries, we are prioritizing bring-your-own-provider (BYOP) support for RStudio on Posit Workbench in 2026.

In Positron

You can bring your own provider to Posit Assistant in Positron. This applies both to Positron Desktop and Positron Pro on Workbench.