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Credits are consumed each time a Squid runs and collects data. Every lobstr.io plan includes a monthly credit allowance, and you control how those credits are distributed across your billing cycle. You can either spread them evenly day by day or keep the full amount available upfront — whichever better fits your scraping workflow.

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Credit allocation modes

lobstr.io gives you two ways to manage your monthly credit budget.
With daily allocation, lobstr.io divides your monthly credits by the number of days remaining in your billing cycle and gives you that amount to use each day.This mode is ideal if you scrape on a consistent daily schedule. Your daily limit resets each morning, making it easy to avoid burning through your full budget in a single run.Example: If you have 3,000 credits remaining and 10 days left in your cycle, you receive 300 credits per day.

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How to switch allocation modes

You can change your credit allocation mode at any time from your account settings.
1

Open Settings

Click Settings in the left sidebar of your lobstr.io dashboard.
2

Go to Usage settings

Select Usage settings.
3

Choose your mode

Under Credit allocation mode, select either Daily or Monthly.

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Spreading a large job across multiple days

If you’re on daily allocation and a Squid needs more credits than your daily quota, you can configure it to pause automatically when the day’s credits run out and resume the next day where it left off.
1

Open Squid Settings

Navigate to your Squid and click Settings.
2

Enable end-run behavior

Find the When to end run section and turn on End run once all tasks consumed.
3

Save and restart the run

Click Save & Exit, then start the run. When your daily credits are exhausted, the run pauses automatically. The next day, when your credits refresh, the run resumes from where it stopped.
This setting lets you complete large scraping jobs incrementally over several days without manually restarting or exceeding your daily quota.