I wanted to ask the community and the team about the expected behavior of the billing dashboard regarding promotional credits.
Currently, the UI states: “Your account has a credit balance that will be automatically applied to Cursor usage.”
However, it seems there is an edge case (or a bug) when enabling On-Demand mode. If a user has an active credit balance and turns on On-Demand usage, does the system bypass the credit balance and charge the credit card directly via a Stripe invoice?
I’ve noticed that “On-Demand usage” doesn’t always automatically draw down from the visible “Credit Balance” as the dashboard text implies.
Has anyone else run into this?
Is this a known UI/UX delay, or do promotional credits strictly exclude certain models/modes even if it’s not specified on the Billing page?
If this is intended behavior, it feels quite confusing from a UX perspective, as the dashboard explicitly says credits apply to “Cursor usage” without warnings. It would be great to get some clarification from the team or other users on how to safely use credits without triggering unexpected out-of-pocket charges.
Hey, thanks for the detailed write-up. Good question. Here’s how it works right now.
Promo credits are almost always scoped to a specific type of usage, like a specific model, Cloud Agents, Bugbot, etc. The deduction order is: first the included usage from your plan, then any credit that’s eligible for that model or product, and only after that On-Demand kicks in and charges your card. If a request uses a model or feature the credit doesn’t cover, the credit is simply skipped and the request goes straight to On-Demand. That’s why your credit balance can stay the same while On-Demand keeps growing. It’s not bypassing the credit, the credit just isn’t applicable.
In your case, the credit shown on the dashboard was tied to a specific model, so usage on other models didn’t qualify. You can see the scope in the line under Credits where the grant name is shown. But you’re right, the wording “applied to Cursor usage” is too broad and doesn’t reflect the limitations. This is a known issue. I’ve flagged it to the team so the scope and eligible models show up directly in that banner.
To use the credit without surprises:
Check the grant name and expiry date in Billing
Use the exact model named by the grant
Keep On-Demand turned off (or set a low spend limit) if you don’t want card charges for other models
If you want someone to look into a specific charge on your account, email [email protected] and they’ll dig into it in detail.