In this tutorial, Ross Zeiger walks viewers through Descript’s monthly AI credit and media minutes system. He explains that both credits and media minutes reset each billing cycle and are deducted whenever an AI‑powered feature (e.g., Studio Sound, green screen) or a minute of video is added. Ross shows how to locate the usage panel in Settings, read the current credit and minute balances, and examine a detailed log that lists each feature use, the user, and the cost in credits or minutes. He demonstrates enabling the “always show usage info” toggle so the usage monitor appears across the app, and he points out how the allocation varies by plan and number of seats. Finally, Ross shows what happens when credits run out, how the UI highlights the depletion, and how to purchase additional credits via the top‑up button. The video ends with a call‑to‑action for viewers to check their own usage and optionally add the monitor to their workspace.
Chapters
In Descript, you have two important things that reset every month. One is your AI credit usage, and that is an allocation of credits that resets every month on your billing cycle that you draw down every time you generate something using AI. Every time you use an AI feature, which is things like Studio Sound, applying the green screen, anything at all that uses AI, it has a cost that draws down your credits. And then on top of that, you also have media minutes. So for every minute of video that you add, it draws down a media minute from your Descript allocation. And the amount that you have depends on the plan that you have. So up here in the top of my screen, this 869 is how many AI credits I have remaining for my current billing cycle. And then to the right of that, the 76 hours is how many media minutes I have remaining. And this whole thing showing up there is something that I turned on in my settings, which I'm going to show you how to do. But for now, if you go into your settings, you click on your drive name in the top left corner, you click on settings, and then you come down on this left side to where it says usage. This shows you how many media minutes you've used out of your monthly allocation. So I've used 2,131 out of 3,000 AI credits, and I have so many because I have multiple seats inside of a business drive. Yours will probably be more or less depending on how many seats you have and depending on what plan you're on. And then below that, I have my monthly media minutes that I've used. And then below that, I can see an actual log of when I used something, the feature that I used, who used it, and the amount that it cost in media minutes or credits. So if I scroll down, I have Studio Sound, which used 10 credits when I applied that particular feature. Now, if you go to the general button in the top left corner, and then you scroll down in here and the very bottom one that says always show usage info, and you toggle that on. That is why I have this open here. So by toggling on the show usage info, you can get this information from everywhere in Descript, even when you're editing a video. And if you click on it, it brings you back into the usage tab of your settings. So it's extremely useful. I like having it up there. And if, if I go to my other drive, this is my Descript Mastery drive. I've actually used up my credits for the month, and you can see that at the top right, it's a darker shade of red and it says zero next to the AI credits. And there's a top-up button, and if you click on it, you can actually add more credits by purchasing them to your account. So now it's your turn. Go into your project, check your usage so far for the month. And if you like, if you like to see it, then you can add your AI credit monitor to the top of your Descript page.
