Credits and failed renders: they come back automatically
A failed render is never charged. How credit holds work, what reserved, settled, released and expired mean, and when to write to support.
The short version
A failed render is never charged, and the credits come back automatically. Credits are held when a job starts and only charged when it completes. The moment a render is marked failed, whatever failed it, the hold is returned to your balance in full, on its own, once. You do not need to write to us for that to happen, and you do not need to notice. The pool a hold comes out of is your plan’s monthly credits.
Some problems are caught before the render starts, so nothing is held in the first place: an avatar whose voice is no longer available, or an edited script on a reel with no measured word timings. Those show as a message on the Render button and say what to change. Rendering failed has the wording for each one.
How a charge actually works
Every generation goes through the same three steps:
- Reserve. When you click Generate or Render, the credits the job needs are set aside from your balance. On the Credit Usage list on the Plan and Usage page this shows as reserved.
- Settle. When the job completes, the hold becomes the final charge and shows as settled. For images and voices the settled amount equals the hold. For video it is reconciled to the real rendered length, so it can be a little lower or a little higher than the estimate.
- Release. If the job fails or is canceled, the hold is returned to your balance in full and shows as released.
There is a fourth status, expired. It marks a leftover hold from a generation that never finished, for example when a job was interrupted before it could report back. Holds like that are returned to your balance automatically. The check runs whenever your balance is read, and a hold is treated as stale after two hours.
Reading the Credit Usage list
Open Plan & Usage and scroll to Credit Usage. Each row shows the date, the kind of generation (Image, Scene image, Refine, Video, Avatar finalize), the credit change, the status, and the balance left after it.
- A settled row shows a minus, for example “-40 cr”.
- A released or expired row shows a plus, for example “+40 cr”. That is the hold coming back.
Hover over a status for a one-line explanation of what it means.
What a failed render looks like
On the Videos page a failed render shows a plain message rather than a technical one. The most common ones:
- “Rendering failed. Try again, and contact support if it keeps happening.”
- “Rendering failed: the video service did not respond. Try again in a minute.”
- “Rendering failed: this avatar has no voice yet. Add a voice, then try again.”
- “Rendering failed: one of the images was rejected. Swap it out, then try again.”
- “Rendering stopped: the script or a shot tripped the content filter. Edit it, then try again.”
- “HeyGen did not finish this shot within 15 minutes; credits returned, please render again.”
In every one of these cases the hold is released. Rendering failed covers what to change before you try again.
The messages that come with no charge at all
These appear on the Render button before the render starts, so no hold is ever taken and there is no release row to look for:
- “Sarah’s voice is no longer available. Open the avatar and pick or regenerate its voice, then render again.” (the name is your avatar’s)
- “This reel was copied before we measured its word timings, so an edited script cannot be placed on it.”
When to write to us
Write to Support@AvatarFactory.IO if any of these is true:
- A row sits as reserved for more than a few hours after the job clearly stopped.
- A settled row exists for a video you never received or that is unusable (blank, silent, cut off).
- The balance on the Credits card does not match the rows in Credit Usage.
Include the email on your account, the video or job ID (it is under the title on the Videos page), and roughly when you started it. We check the job on our side and put the credits back if a settled charge should not have happened. That is the one remedy we can apply without a wait: the Terms say used credits are not refundable, and a failed job never used them.
Putting credits back is different from a money refund. Credits are the unit the app spends; a refund is money to your card and follows the refund policy.
What this does not cover
A render that completed and produced a video you simply do not like is a settled charge. Use the feedback tools on the video to regenerate a shot; each regenerate is its own charge. If you think the result is broken rather than disappointing, send the video ID and we will look at it.