How does auto-refill interact with my monthly subscription?

Plenty of Valid Email Checker accounts run a monthly subscription and have auto-refill enabled. The two systems are independent but interact in a few specific ways. Understanding how they fit together avoids surprises like "I have a Monthly bucket so why did auto-refill just fire" or "my subscription renewed but my auto-refill cap did not reset."

Auto-refill watches the total balance, not the bucket

The threshold check compares your total credits (Monthly plus PAYG combined) to the threshold. If you have 4,000 Monthly and 1,500 PAYG and a threshold of 5,000, the total is 5,500 and no refill fires. The moment the total drops to 5,000 or below, the refill triggers — even if you still have plenty of Monthly credits and zero PAYG.

Consumption order: Monthly first, then PAYG

When you verify an email, VEC spends Monthly credits first (they expire on subscription renewal) and PAYG credits last (they never expire). See the credit system explainer for the full breakdown. The practical consequence for auto-refill: your Monthly bucket gets drained before your PAYG bucket, so a Monthly account that has not done a refill in months will still see Monthly hit zero first and PAYG sit untouched.

Auto-refill always tops up PAYG, regardless of subscription

When auto-refill triggers, the credits it buys land in your PAYG bucket — always. This is true even if you have an active subscription. The logic is that auto-refill purchases are one-time top-ups, and PAYG is the right home for one-time purchases (no expiry, no renewal cycle). So a typical month for an active subscription user looks like this: subscription credits land Monthly on the 1st, you spend them through the month, and if you run low before renewal, auto-refill fires and adds PAYG credits to bridge until the next renewal.

Subscription renewal does not reset auto-refill counters

A common misconception. Your auto-refill monthly cap (default 3) is tied to the calendar month, not to your subscription billing cycle. If your subscription renews on the 15th and you have already used all 3 refills by the 14th, the renewal does not reset the cap. The cap resets at 00:00 UTC on the 1st of the next month, period. Similarly, the auto-refill failure counter is tied to consecutive failed charges and only resets on a successful charge — subscription renewal events do not affect it.

When you might still need auto-refill on a subscription

• Your subscription tier is below your actual usage — you bought 10,000 credits a month but you actually run 15,000. Auto-refill bridges the gap without you upgrading the tier permanently.
• You have bursty traffic — most months you stay within the subscription allowance, but occasional spikes exceed it. Auto-refill kicks in only on the spike months.
• You want a belt-and-suspenders safety net even though your subscription covers normal usage. The PAYG credits from auto-refill are permanent, so they accumulate slowly as backup.

When you can probably skip auto-refill

If your subscription tier is comfortably above your real usage (you regularly carry unused Monthly credits into the renewal that then get wiped), auto-refill is unlikely to ever fire and there is no harm in not configuring it. You can always enable it later if your usage grows.