Credit System

At Cal.com, SMS and WhatsApp messages can be sent to keep attendees informed about bookings, reminders, and cancellations. While these messages can be funded through various methods (e.g., organization-level billing), credits are one of the available ways to manage usage—especially for teams and smaller accounts.

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Overview of Messaging Credits

Credits are used as a flexible payment method to send:

• SMS messages (booking confirmations, reminders, updates)
• WhatsApp messages (booking alerts, confirmations)

While many organization-level accounts may fund messaging centrally or directly via integrations like Twilio, credits serve as a prepaid way to power messaging, especially on smaller plans.

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Credit Allocation by Plan Type

The number of messaging credits available to your account depends on your plan type:

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Organizations (Enterprise)

• Unlimited credits
• Messaging costs are typically covered through your organization’s billing method, making credits unnecessary

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Team Plan

• 750 credits per team member per month
• Credits reset at the start of each billing cycle
• You can purchase more credits from Team Settings as needed

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Free Users

• No free credits included
• You can purchase credits manually from your Billing Settings

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Credit-Based Messaging Costs

The cost depends on the recipient’s location and the delivery method:

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🇺🇸 United States & 🇨🇦 Canada

• SMS and WhatsApp messages are free on the Teams Plan in these regions
• Credits are not deducted

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🌍 Other Countries

• One credit = $0.01 USD
• The total credit cost per message is based on:
  • Twilio’s region-specific SMS rates
  • A standard 80% processing fee

📌 Example: If Twilio charges $0.05 per SMS to India, your effective cost is:

0.05 + (0.05 * 0.8) = $0.09 = 9 credits

You can check up-to-date Twilio pricing here: Twilio SMS Pricing

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Segment-Based Billing

Credits are charged per segment, not per message. Most SMS messages are broken into segments based on character count:

• Standard segment: up to 160 characters
• Messages with emojis or special characters: up to 70 characters per segment

Each segment is treated as a separate message, and credits are then calculated based on the information above.

📎 Want to check how many segments your message will use?
Use Twilio’s Segment Calculator to estimate credit usage before sending.

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Behavior When Credit Balance Is Exhausted

• Low credit alerts: We’ll send email warnings when your balance gets low (all admins are notified for teams)
• Exhaustion fallback:
  • If credits run out, SMS/WhatsApp messages will automatically stop
  • Cal.com will fall back to email delivery only for affected messages

This ensures bookings still go through, but real-time alerts may be delayed if recipients rely on SMS/WhatsApp.