Usage pricing. Know the price before your AI acts.
Obol runs a few tools itself, so your AI can search the web, read a page or read the text in an image without you opening another account. Each use has a fixed price in cents, every plan includes a monthly amount, and your model and app providers still bill you directly.
Built-in tools are rolling out to Obol Cloud, and image generation is coming. The prices below are already published.
What each action costs, and who bills it.
- Catalog
- builtin_v1
- Currency
- USD
Built-in tools Obol runs
Rolling outWeb search
Search the public web and return up to 10 results.
obol.web_search1¢per searchSearXNGOpen source, operated by Obol. License: AGPL-3.0
Or Brave Search API, a hosted API on Obol's account
Read a web page
Fetch one public page and return its main text as Markdown.
obol.web_fetch0.5¢per pageScraplingOpen source, operated by Obol. License: BSD-3-Clause
Generate an imageComing
Generate one image from a text prompt with FLUX.1 [schnell].
obol.image_generateWaiting for your OKin production, unless your rules allow it
2¢per imageFLUX.1 [schnell] on MuAPIHosted API: MuAPI, on Obol's account. License: Apache-2.0 model weights
Read text in an image
Extract printed text from one image with OCR.
obol.image_text0.5¢per imageTesseract OCROpen source, operated by Obol. License: Apache-2.0
Your own connections
A request to your AI model
Sent with your own model key.
POST /v1/chat/completionsWhat Obol counts- 1 model request
Who bills itBilled by your vendor at your rate
A refund in Stripe
Made on your own Stripe account.
stripe.create_refundWhat Obol counts- 1 tool call
- 1 write
- 1 destructive
- Waiting for your OKin production
Who bills itBilled by your vendor at your rate
Obol Workers
Early accessWorkers compute
A minute of a standard Workers code or browser environment, in early access. Not yet on Obol Cloud.
environment_active_secondsWhat Obol meters- Active time, rounded up to a whole minute
One-minute minimum per active interval. An unused reservation goes back to your prepaid balance, and the monthly included built-in tool amount never pays for Workers. Model and tool calls inside a run use your own keys and count as above. Demo runs are never charged.
Price2¢ per active minute ($1.20 per hour), paid from your prepaid balance.
US dollars and centsObol runs open-source software where it can, and pays for a hosted API on its own account only where that costs less. Each built-in tool above names its source and license.
How usage is paid. Included first, then your prepaid balance, then it stops.
Included each month, shared across your organization.
- Obol Cloud
- $20.00
- During the $1 trial
- $1.00
Of built-in tool use. It refills on the first of each month (UTC).
Then your prepaid balance, if you have one.
Your prepaid balance pays for usage on Obol Cloud: built-in tools after the monthly included amount, and Workers compute. Your plan’s monthly fee is billed to your card, and your model and app providers bill you directly.
No automatic overage.
When both run out, built-in calls stop. Nothing is billed afterwards.
- Counts toward your plan
- Each built-in call also counts as one tool call in your plan’s monthly allowance.
- Tools that create something
- “Generate an image” waits for your OK in production unless your rules allow it, and counts as a write and a destructive call as well as a tool call. “Generate an image” is coming and isn’t available yet.
- Workspaces you already had
- Workspaces that existed before built-in tools start with them off until an admin turns them on.
- Free Self-hosted
- Obol Workers and built-in tools are Obol Cloud services. They are not part of Free Self-hosted. The self-host bundle doesn’t include the service that runs built-in tools.
Questions about usage pricing, answered plainly.
Each plan’s price and monthly limits are in the pricing section.
A web search costs 1¢ and reading a page costs 0.5¢, so Obol Cloud’s $20.00 of built-in tool use covers up to 2,000 searches or 4,000 pages a month. During the $1 trial, $1.00 covers up to 100 searches.
When the month’s included amount and any prepaid balance are used up, built-in calls stop until the included amount refills on the first of the month (UTC). Nothing is billed automatically, and your other actions carry on under your plan. The included amount doesn’t roll over, and adding workspaces doesn’t add more: one allowance is shared across your organization.
No. Your prepaid balance pays Obol, never the apps you connect. Stripe, GitHub, your own OpenAI or Anthropic account and the rest bill you directly, at your rate, and Obol adds no markup to those bills.
No. Obol Workers and built-in tools are Obol Cloud services. They are not part of Free Self-hosted. Obol Workers is in early access and not yet on Obol Cloud, and built-in tools are rolling out to it.
Yes. An admin can turn them on or off for each workspace at any time. When they’re on, your AI can still use only the built-in tools your rules allow. A rule that allows every action allows these too, so check your rules before you turn them on.
To the source named beside each tool above: open-source software Obol runs, or a hosted API Obol pays for. A search through SearXNG also reaches the search engines it asks. If that doesn’t suit you, leave built-in tools off, or leave them out of your rules.