credits · questions · the ladder
The economy
Credits are consumption units for product capacity. They buy questions to answer. They never earn, never appreciate, and never pay out — and no amount of spend improves a probability. This page explains the whole economy: the unit, the prices, the ladder, and what happens to the credits you already hold.
What is a credit
A credit is the unit of account. One credit is $0.00 of list value at the opening rung. What a credit costs in USD rises only when the ladder turns, and the ladder turns only on published evidence.
creditUsd = 0.001 × 1.25^rung
At Rung 1, one credit is $0.00125 — 1,000 credits is $1.25.
What a question costs
A question's tier fixes its credit price, and that price never changes. The USD a question settles for is credits × $0.00 × the ladder multiplier at the current rung. The judgment floor is one entry question: 1,000 credits — $1.00 at the opening rung. Nothing on Tollbridge sells below it.
| Tier | Credits | USD at rung 1 | What it covers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry | 1,000 | $1.25 | Short-window questions — the default price of a call. |
| Long | 2,000 | $2.50 | Longer horizons and heavier settling data. |
| Account | 5,000 | $6.25 | Wallet and account questions — the deepest subject. |
Why some questions cost more
Every question carries an Intelligence Level, 1 to 5, derived never hand-set: from its complexity, the calibration record behind it, its share of the decision intelligence, its data quality, and its sample adequacy. A harder, better-evidenced question costs more credits, grants more experience, and contributes more to the record.
| Level | Credits | Experience to ask | Experience for a correct call |
|---|---|---|---|
| IL1 · Recon | 200–600 | 5 | 20 |
| IL2 · Signal | 600–1,500 | 12 | 40 |
| IL3 · Vector | 1,500–3,500 | 30 | 70 |
| IL4 · Deep | 3,500–8,000 | 60 | 110 |
| IL5 · Prime | 8,000+ | 120 | 160 |
Read live from the Intelligence Level catalog.
What the ladder is
The ladder sets what a credit costs in USD. It rises in steps of 25%, and a step turns only when both conditions hold: the public record reached the next outcome milestone, and the intelligence crossed the declarations below. If either fails, the step does not turn — visibly, no matter how large the record grows. A turn gets a day's public notice.
Gate: none — the opening rung
Gate: at least 1 published calibration band
Gate: a release whose holdout skill beats the reference with its interval above zero
Gate: at least 30 published calibration bands and a release version 2.0.0 or later
Gate: at least 100 published calibration bands and a release version 3.0.0 or later
Live: the book prices at Rung 1, with no turn scheduled.
A turn raises what a credit costs. Questions stay 1,000 / 2,000 / 5,000 credits.
Work out your own numbers
Enter a balance and a question family and see what the credits buy, what a rank discount changes, and what the same purchase would cost one step up the ladder. Nothing here is sent anywhere — the arithmetic runs in your browser over the live rate.
Your inputs
What that buys
One credit is $0.00125 at Rung 1.
- Question cost (Entry)
- 1,000 credits
- Capacity at your balance
Entry: 150 questions
Long: 75 questions
Account: 30 questions
A Initiate rank trims 0% off the credits above the judgment floor. The floor is inviolable: a question never costs less than 1,000 credits, so entry questions — already at the floor — are unchanged at 1,000 credits.
Acquiring your balance
- Credits
- 150,000
- At the current rate
- $187.50
- At the next rung (arithmetic only)
- $234.38
COUNTERFACTUAL — NOT A PROMISE. Priced one step up the ladder, the same 150,000 credits would cost $234.38 instead of $187.50. The next rung is not in effect yet: it opens only when 10,000 realized outcomes and the holdout skill gate.
Evidence gate: 3,411 of 10,000 realized outcomes (6,589 to go).
the holdout skill gate: not met
What happens to the credits I already bought
They remain credits. A turn changes what a credit costs in USD — it does not shrink your balance, and it does not change the credit price of a question. Credits do not expire on their own; each lot carries its own terms, and the lot you hold keeps them:
- Booster packs — 60 days after purchase.
- Plan grants — 30 days, at the period boundary.
- Your free questions — never expire.
The price lock
A price lock fixes the per-credit rate you pay for 12 months, for a 20% premium over today's rate. It is payer-bound and non-transferable — it travels with your address, never with the credits. It is price certainty for the term you pay for: never a return, never a savings claim, never an investment.
Refusals and reversals
A refusal is a first-class answer, not an outage. When Tollbridge declines to answer — because the data it needs is not good enough to support a call — the credits for that question are reversed, and if the question was a free one, that free question is not spent. A genuine refusal never costs you anything.
The same holds when a run fails before it produces a decision: the credits are reversed automatically and your balance returns to what it was. You are not charged for a run that did not happen.
Free questions
Your first 3 questions are free, once per payer address, on entry-priced questions only — S01 Market regime, S05 Volatility expansion, S06 Funding anomaly. A refusal never spends one, and they never expire.
Read the machine-readable copy at /economy.json, or continue to credits, the ladder and the record. This page states the rules; the live numbers are always the ones the record and the price list publish.