Credits & Pricing
How SERPHouse credits are actually spent by Rank Tracker, with the exact formula and a worked example.
Rank Tracker itself is free
There's no separate subscription for the add-on. Every rank check spends SERPHouse API credits from your own SERPHouse account, the same pool of credits used by any other SERPHouse integration. Plan pricing lives on the main Getting Started page; this page explains what Rank Tracker specifically does with those credits.
The formula
Every keyword + location pair that needs checking costs credits based on your Search depth setting, because SERPHouse charges per page it scrapes, and Search depth determines how many pages that is.
Cost = pages, not position
You're charged for every page SERPHouse scrapes to fulfil your Search depth, regardless of where your site turns up in the results. Rank Tracker doesn't ask SERPHouse to stop early once it finds your domain; it scans every returned page locally, after the fact. Searching Top 100 costs the same whether your site is #2 or absent entirely.
| Search depth | Pages requested (max_pages) | Credits per pair, per day |
|---|---|---|
| Top 10 | 1 | 10 |
| Top 30 | 3 | 30 |
| Top 50 | 5 | 50 |
| Top 100 | 10 | 100 |
This is the same 1 page = 10 credits rule documented on the Google SERP (Top 100 Results) endpoint that Rank Tracker calls under the hood. Nothing here is a special or different rate.
Estimating the cost of a run
Estimated cost = (pairs that still need a check today) × (credits per pair, from the table above)The key phrase is "pairs that still need a check today", not your full tracked list. A pair that's already ranked or confirmed not-ranked earlier today is skipped entirely on a re-run, at zero extra cost. Only pairs that are blank or marked F (failed) get checked. See What actually gets checked for the full explanation.
Where you see the cost before you spend it
The Fetch rankings now sidebar always shows a pre-flight estimate before anything runs: pairs to check, the estimated credit cost, and your current balance, with a warning if the estimate could exceed it.
Scheduled runs can't ask permission
On a manual fetch, exceeding your balance estimate prompts a "Continue anyway?" confirmation. A scheduled run has no one to ask, so it logs a warning and proceeds anyway. If your balance is genuinely close to zero, a scheduled run can start and then simply run out mid-way, so set a realistic low-credit threshold to notice before that happens, not after.
Checking your balance
Your balance is always visible on the Dashboard's row-2 bar (Site: … • Credits: …), refreshed after every fetch. It turns red with a ⚠ LOW label once it drops below your configured low-credit threshold (500 by default). You can also force an immediate check from the menu → Check credit balance.
Reducing what you spend
- Lower Search depth. This is the single biggest lever: dropping from Top 100 to Top 30 cuts the cost of every pair by more than 3×.
- Track fewer pairs, or exclude low-priority ones with the
Xmarker. Excluded pairs cost nothing, and it's reversible at any time. - Fetch less often. Switch Frequency from Daily to Alternate days or Weekly, and enable Skip weekends.
- Let the retry model work for you. There's no need to manually re-run a fetch that already shows "Completed" for the day. Everything that succeeded is skipped automatically on any re-run, so retrying costs nothing extra, but it also gains nothing.
Worked example
20 keywords tracked across 5 locations equals 100 pairs.
| Scenario | Credits per run | Roughly per month |
|---|---|---|
| Top 100, run Daily | 100 × 100 = 10,000 | ~300,000 |
| Top 30, run Daily | 100 × 30 = 3,000 | ~90,000 |
| Top 30, run Alternate days | 100 × 30 = 3,000 | ~45,000 |
Tip
Run these numbers against your own tracked list before pasting in a few hundred keywords at once. It's easy to add a lot of pairs quickly through the Setup guide's bulk keyword box, and the cost scales linearly with every one you add. Compare the totals above against your plan's credit allowance on Getting Started.
Behind the scenes
Only one call actually spends credits under this model: the ranking check itself, against the Google Advanced (Top 100) endpoint. The account balance and location search calls Rank Tracker makes elsewhere (checking your balance, validating a location, populating the Add-location search dialog) are separate, administrative lookups, and not part of the ranking-check flow described above.
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