Why a run cost more than expected: clip review and credits
Eddie reviewing your footage frame-by-frame before cutting is often the biggest cost in a run, and you can control or skip it.
Why one run can cost far more than another
Most of what Eddie does from a prompt — cutting, trimming, adding titles, placing b-roll — costs little to nothing beyond the import. The one step that can dominate a run's cost is Eddie actually reviewing your footage: pulling frames from your clips and looking at them before deciding what to cut. Frames are metered as they're pulled, and reviewing several clips this way can cost more than the edit itself, sometimes without producing a finished cut yet.
Some projects have a standing setting — "review every clip" — that makes Eddie look at frames from every clip before it builds anything. This is meant to raise quality on projects where visual review genuinely matters, but it also means a request that only needed the transcript can end up paying for a full visual pass anyway.
How to avoid paying for review you don't need
- Say "build with what you have" at any point during a review-heavy run to stop the review early and let Eddie cut from what it's already seen plus the transcript.
- Ask Eddie to skip frame review for a specific request if you're confident the transcript alone is enough — for example a talking-head cut driven entirely by what's said.
- Check whether "review every clip" is turned on for the project if runs keep spending heavily on frames before anything gets built, and ask Eddie to turn it off if you don't need it for that project.
- Ask for a cost estimate first. Telling Eddie a cost condition — "only if it's free," "tell me the cost before doing anything expensive" — makes it check and report before spending on review or generation.
Using Eddie from Claude, ChatGPT or another MCP client doesn't change the cost
Credits are charged by Eddie's own backend for the work done — importing, reviewing frames, generating content — not by which chat client sent the request. Connecting from ChatGPT or Claude instead of the web app or Prompt Eddie doesn't reduce or avoid these charges; it's the same account, the same workspace credits, and the same metered actions either way.
If a run is refunded
A run that doesn't end up changing your edit — for example one that only researched the footage and hit a limit before building anything — has its prompt credits refunded automatically. Billing questions themselves, and asking Eddie to look into its own recent spend, don't cost anything either.
Related: Estimating cost for a large or long-form project, How credits and billing work.