42 words that decide what you pay for an AI tool, each one explained in about a minute. Where a term has its own meaning in AI pricing, the definition says so, and says what it changes at checkout.
The 42 terms
- credits
- transcription
- AI agent
- AI clipping
- AI dubbing
- AI fashion model
- AI summary
- API
- background removal
- bilingual translation
- bot-free recording
- brand voice
- captions vs subtitles
- deployment
- design system
- design-to-code
- enrichment
- Figma export
- flashcards
- GEO
- ICP
- image upscaling
- intent signal
- internal linking
- lead scoring
- LMS
- MCP
- meeting summary
- outbound
- reframing
- SERP analysis
- short-form video
- speaker diarization
- subtitle translation
- text-to-speech
- token
- translation engine
- UI vs UX
- upscaling
- vibe coding
- virality score
- wireframe
- credits
- Units some AI tools sell instead of seats or subscriptions. One credit usually equals one generation: one image, one clip, one minute of transcription.
Why it matters when you buy. Credits decide your real cost. A cheap plan with few credits is often more expensive per result than a larger plan, so compare price per credit, not price per month. - transcription
- Turning speech into written text, with timestamps and usually a speaker label.
Why it matters when you buy. Accuracy on your own accent, your own microphone and your own language is what matters, and no pricing page tells you that. Look for a free minute count to test with your own recording. - AI agent
- Software that takes a goal rather than a command and performs the steps itself, in sequence, without you clicking through each one.
Why it matters when you buy. An agent costs more to run than a single prompt because one request can trigger dozens of model calls. Check what a plan limits: agents, messages, or the credits behind them. - AI clipping
- Cutting a long video into short vertical clips automatically, usually by finding the moments most likely to perform.
Why it matters when you buy. The output is a draft, not a finished edit. Check whether the plan includes captions and reframing, and whether you can trim a clip by hand afterwards. - AI dubbing
- Replacing the spoken audio of a video with a synthetic voice in another language, trying to keep the timing and the tone.
Why it matters when you buy. Dubbing quality depends heavily on the language pair. Test the pair you need before buying an annual plan. - AI fashion model
- Generating a synthetic person wearing a garment, so a product can be photographed without a model or a studio.
Why it matters when you buy. Check what you are allowed to do with the generated person commercially, and whether you get a license for the model's likeness. - AI summary
- A condensed version of a long document, recording or video, written by a model.
Why it matters when you buy. Summaries drop what the model considers unimportant, which is not always what you need. The useful test is whether you can ask follow-up questions on the source. - API
- A documented way for one program to call another. An API lets you run a tool from your own code instead of its interface.
Why it matters when you buy. API access is often priced separately from the app, and often only on higher plans. If you plan to automate anything, check it is included before you choose a plan. - background removal
- Cutting the subject out of an image and leaving a transparent background.
Why it matters when you buy. Hair, glass and soft edges are where cheap tools show. Run your hardest image through the free tier before paying. - bilingual translation
- Showing the original text and the translation side by side, usually sentence by sentence in a browser.
Why it matters when you buy. This is what lets you check a translation instead of trusting it. If a tool only gives you the translated page, you cannot. - bot-free recording
- Recording a meeting from your own device instead of sending a visible bot into the call.
Why it matters when you buy. No bot means no waiting room and no notification to the other side, but it also means the recording depends on your device and your connection. - brand voice
- A written description of how a brand sounds, stored so a writing tool can reuse it.
Why it matters when you buy. Without one, every article drifts. Check whether the voice is a reusable setting or something you paste into each prompt. - captions vs subtitles
- Captions transcribe the speech and the sounds, and assume the viewer cannot hear. Subtitles translate the dialogue and assume the viewer can hear the original.
Why it matters when you buy. The distinction decides which feature you need, and tools label them loosely. If you publish in one language for a deaf audience, that is captions. - deployment
- Putting software on a server where other people can reach it, as opposed to running it on your own machine.
Why it matters when you buy. In an app builder, deployment is often where the free plan stops. Check the hosting included in each plan before comparing prices. - design system
- A set of reusable components, spacing rules and colors that keeps a product's screens consistent.
Why it matters when you buy. A generated screen that ignores your system is rework. Check whether the tool can import or export tokens, not just screens. - design-to-code
- Turning a design into working front-end code, usually HTML and CSS.
Why it matters when you buy. Ask what the code is for. Clean markup you can maintain costs more than a picture of a screen, and not every tool produces it. - enrichment
- Filling in missing data about a person or a company from other sources: a work email, a phone number, a job title.
Why it matters when you buy. Enrichment is where outreach tools bill the most and where data goes stale fastest. Check the monthly credit allowance, not the feature list. - Figma export
- Sending a generated design into Figma, so a designer can keep working on it.
Why it matters when you buy. Export is a license question as much as a technical one: check what you are allowed to do with the file afterwards. - flashcards
- Question and answer cards used for active recall, the study method where you try to remember before checking.
Why it matters when you buy. What matters is how the cards are generated from your material and whether they sync across devices. Wrong cards cost more time than making them by hand. - GEO
- Generative engine optimisation: getting a page cited by AI assistants and answer engines, rather than ranked in a list of links.
Why it matters when you buy. It changes what you optimise: clear claims, named sources and structured data matter more than keyword density. - ICP
- Ideal customer profile: the written description of the company you sell to, used to filter prospects.
Why it matters when you buy. Every sourcing tool asks for one. A vague profile produces a long list of irrelevant leads, however good the data. - image upscaling
- Increasing the resolution of an image with a model that invents the missing detail.
Why it matters when you buy. The detail is invented, so check the result on a face and on text before using it on a product photo. - intent signal
- A public clue that a person or a company is in the market now: a job posting, a funding round, a new tool in their stack.
Why it matters when you buy. Signals are what turn a cold list into a warm one. Ask which sources a tool reads before paying for the output. - internal linking
- Links between pages of your own site, used to pass authority and to help readers move on.
Why it matters when you buy. Automation helps at scale but can produce absurd links. Check whether the tool lets you exclude pages and edit its choices. - lead scoring
- Ranking prospects by how likely they are to buy, from data points you choose.
Why it matters when you buy. A score is only as good as its inputs. Ask what happens to the score when the data is missing, and whether you can override it. - LMS
- Learning management system: the software a school or company uses to distribute courses, track students and grade work.
Why it matters when you buy. If a study tool does not integrate with the LMS you already use, the material moves by hand, and that cost is not on the pricing page. - MCP
- Model Context Protocol: an open standard for giving an AI model access to tools and data in a consistent way.
Why it matters when you buy. It is the difference between a model that can use your stack and one that can only talk about it. Check which connections ship today, not which are announced. - meeting summary
- Structured notes produced from a meeting recording: decisions, action points and who owns them.
Why it matters when you buy. Ask where the summary is sent. A summary that lands in the wrong workspace does not save the ten minutes it promised. - outbound
- Contacting prospects who have not asked to hear from you, by email, social message or phone.
Why it matters when you buy. Deliverability is the hidden cost. Sending volume is cheap, landing in an inbox is not, so check whether the price includes warmed senders. - reframing
- Changing the shape of a video, usually from wide to vertical, while keeping the subject inside the frame.
Why it matters when you buy. Automatic reframing fails on two speakers and on screen recordings. Test one hard clip before buying an annual plan. - SERP analysis
- Reading the search results page before writing: who ranks, what they cover, what the results have in common.
Why it matters when you buy. It decides what the article has to contain to compete. A writer that skips this step produces text that cannot rank. - short-form video
- Vertical video made for a phone feed, usually under about sixty seconds, published to one or more platforms.
Why it matters when you buy. Volume is the model, so per-clip cost and quota matter more than editing depth. Count the clips a plan includes. - speaker diarization
- Labelling a transcript with who said what, so a meeting reads as a conversation rather than a wall of text.
Why it matters when you buy. Accents, crosstalk and remote audio break it. Run a real meeting through the free tier before paying. - subtitle translation
- Translating existing subtitles into another language, keeping the timing.
Why it matters when you buy. Line length is the trap: long sentences do not fit the screen. Check whether the tool rewrites to fit or only translates. - text-to-speech
- Generating spoken audio from written text, with a synthetic voice.
Why it matters when you buy. Check the commercial license on the voice and whether the plan allows publishing the audio, not just exporting it. - token
- A chunk of text a language model reads or writes. Pricing and limits are usually counted in tokens, not words; a thousand tokens is roughly 750 English words.
Why it matters when you buy. It is the unit behind most AI bills, and the reason a long document can cost more than a short conversation. - translation engine
- The system doing the translation: a specialist engine such as DeepL or Google, or a general language model.
Why it matters when you buy. Specialist engines are usually more literal and cheaper; models handle context better and cost more. Good tools let you choose. - UI vs UX
- UI is what a screen looks like and how it responds. UX is how the whole flow feels to use, from the first click to the finished task.
Why it matters when you buy. A design tool that generates pretty screens does not fix a confusing flow, and a nice interface on a bad flow still loses customers. - upscaling
- Increasing the resolution of a video or an image so it can be shown larger.
Why it matters when you buy. On video it is slow and expensive per minute. Check whether the plan counts minutes or files before comparing price. - vibe coding
- Building software by describing what you want in plain language and letting a model write the code.
Why it matters when you buy. Fast to start, and it moves the cost to maintenance: you still need to understand what was built when something breaks. - virality score
- A prediction, produced by a model, of how well a clip is likely to perform on a platform.
Why it matters when you buy. It is a guess dressed as a number. Treat it as a sorting tool inside a long recording, not as a forecast. - wireframe
- A low-detail layout sketch showing where things go on a screen, before any visual design.
Why it matters when you buy. It is the cheapest place to fix a screen. A tool that generates wireframes saves time only if the structure is right.