Why do my monthly credits get used before my PAYG credits?

Valid Email Checker always drains your Monthly bucket before touching your Pay-As-You-Go bucket. If your sidebar widget shows Monthly going down while PAYG sits unchanged, that is working as designed. There is a clear reason behind the order.

Monthly credits reset, PAYG credits do not

A Monthly subscription resets the Monthly bucket at the end of each billing cycle. Whatever you did not use that month is gone when the new cycle starts. PAYG credits, by contrast, sit in your account indefinitely — no expiration, no reset (see do credits expire).

If we spent PAYG first while you had unused Monthly credits sitting there, those Monthly credits would expire at cycle-end. You would have paid for credits twice (once via subscription, once via PAYG) and only used one bucket. Spending Monthly first means you get the benefit of every credit you paid for.

Concrete example

Say your account has 1,000 Monthly credits and 5,000 PAYG credits. You bulk-verify 800 emails. VEC takes all 800 from Monthly, leaving Monthly at 200 and PAYG untouched at 5,000. If you then verify another 500 emails, the first 200 come from Monthly (draining it to zero) and the remaining 300 come from PAYG, leaving PAYG at 4,700. Your never-expire balance stays as large as possible for as long as possible.

You cannot override the order

There is no setting to flip the priority. The order is enforced server-side by an atomic deduction routine, which means it applies the same way for single verifications, bulk uploads, and the public API. We do not let users spend PAYG first because doing so would consistently lose them money on hybrid plans, and we would rather get the default right for everyone than expose a footgun. See credit consumption order for the full sequence.

What this means for planning

If you have a Monthly subscription, treat your Monthly bucket as the budget you should aim to spend each cycle. Anything left over at cycle-end resets. If you regularly have leftover Monthly credits, downsize to a smaller plan and let PAYG cover the occasional overflow. If you regularly run out of Monthly mid-cycle, upsize or layer in a PAYG top-up — VEC will burn through Monthly first, then quietly continue with PAYG.