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Your lobstr.io plan includes a monthly credit allowance. How those credits are distributed depends on the allocation mode you choose — daily or monthly. Different users have different needs:
  • Some scrape data every day and want to avoid burning all their credits at once.
  • Others want to run large one-off jobs and prefer all credits available upfront.
For the full concept walkthrough, see Credits: How Usage Is Measured and Allocated.

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Daily allocation

Daily credit allocation mode
With Daily Allocation, your monthly credits are divided by the remaining days in your billing cycle. You get a set amount of credits to use each day, which makes it easy to stick to a steady scraping routine and avoid running out early. Ideal for consistent daily scraping with a clear limit.

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Monthly allocation

Monthly credit allocation mode
With Monthly Allocation, you get all your credits for the month upfront. Use them however and whenever you want within the billing cycle — perfect for big scraping jobs that need lots of credits at once.

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Switching between modes

You can change your allocation mode anytime:
Switch between Daily and Monthly allocation in Usage settings
  1. Go to Settings from the left sidebar of your lobstr.io dashboard.
  2. Click Usage settings.
  3. Under Credit allocation mode, choose Daily or Monthly.
Switching modes does not add or remove credits — it only changes how your existing balance is distributed.

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What if your Squid needs more credits than your daily quota?

If a scraping job needs more credits than you have for the day, you can set up a temporary pause so it resumes the next day. In your Squid settings, go to When to end run and turn on End run once all tasks consumed.
Enable End run once all tasks consumed
Once you hit your daily limit, the run automatically pauses. The next day, when your daily credits refresh, the run picks up right where it left off — letting you complete larger jobs over multiple days without breaking your daily quota.

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Detailed walkthrough: spreading daily credits

1

Update your end-run settings

By default, the scraper stops when the day’s credits have been used up.
Run stopped because no credits left
To make it pause instead and resume the next day:
  • Go to your Squid settings.
  • Open the Settings section.
  • Select End run once all tasks consumed.
Select End run once all tasks consumed
Press Save & Exit.
2

Restart collection

Go back to your Squid and restart the collection. The scraper will collect as much data as possible, pause when credits run out, and resume the next day.
Scraper pauses and resumes next day
This way, you can spread your daily credits over several days:
Spread daily credits over several days

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Running out of credits

If you exhaust your credits before the billing cycle renews:
  • On daily mode: wait for tomorrow’s refresh, or switch to monthly to access any remaining balance.
  • On monthly mode: wait for your next billing cycle, or reset your billing cycle early to get a fresh allocation (this charges your plan amount immediately).