"A page is a simple billing unit that measures how much content you add to your knowledge base. For PDFs, one page equals one real PDF page. For other document types like Word, PowerPoint, and Excel files, pages are automatically estimated based on the file. Every file uses at least 1 page.",
question:"What are Basic and Premium processing modes?",
answer:
"When uploading documents, you can choose between two processing modes. Basic mode uses standard extraction and costs 1 page credit per page, great for most documents. Premium mode uses advanced extraction optimized for complex financial, medical, and legal documents with intricate tables, layouts, and formatting. Premium costs 10 page credits per page but delivers significantly higher fidelity output for these specialized document types.",
"There's no monthly subscription. When you need more pages, simply purchase 1,000-page packs at $1 each. Purchased pages are added to your account immediately so you can keep indexing right away. You only pay when you actually need more.",
},
{
question:"What happens if I run out of pages?",
answer:
"SurfSense checks your remaining pages before processing each file. If you don't have enough, the upload is paused and you'll be notified. You can purchase additional page packs at any time to continue. For cloud connector syncs, a small overage may be allowed so your sync doesn't partially fail.",
},
{
question:"If I delete a document, do I get my pages back?",
answer:
"No. Deleting a document removes it from your knowledge base, but the pages it used are not refunded. Pages track your total usage over time, not how much is currently stored. So be mindful of what you index. Once pages are spent, they're spent even if you later remove the document.",
},
],
},
{
title:"File Types & Connectors",
items:[
{
question:"Which file types count toward my page limit?",
answer:
"Page limits only apply to document files that need processing, including PDFs, Word documents (DOC, DOCX, ODT, RTF), presentations (PPT, PPTX, ODP), spreadsheets (XLS, XLSX, ODS), ebooks (EPUB), and images (JPG, PNG, TIFF, WebP, BMP). Plain text files, code files, Markdown, CSV, TSV, HTML, audio, and video files do not consume any pages.",
"Pages are deducted whenever a document file is successfully indexed into your knowledge base, whether through direct uploads or file-based connector syncs (Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, Local Folder). In Basic mode, each page costs 1 page credit; in Premium mode, each page costs 10 page credits. SurfSense checks your remaining credits before processing and only charges you after the file is indexed. Duplicate documents are automatically detected and won't cost you extra pages.",
question:"Do connectors like Slack, Notion, or Gmail use pages?",
answer:
"No. Connectors that work with structured text data like Slack, Discord, Notion, Confluence, Jira, Linear, ClickUp, GitHub, Gmail, Google Calendar, Microsoft Teams, Airtable, Elasticsearch, Web Crawler, BookStack, Obsidian, and Luma do not use pages at all. Page limits only apply to file-based connectors that need document processing, such as Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, and Local Folder syncs.",
"Premium tokens are the billing unit for using premium AI models like GPT-5.4, Claude Sonnet 4.6, and Gemini 2.5 Pro in SurfSense. Each AI request consumes tokens based on the length of your conversation. Non-premium models (such as free-tier models available without login) do not consume premium tokens.",
},
{
question:"How many premium tokens do I get for free?",
answer:
"Every registered SurfSense account starts with 3 million premium tokens at no cost. Anonymous users (no login) get 500,000 free tokens across all models. Once your free tokens are used up, you can purchase more at any time.",
},
{
question:"How does purchasing premium tokens work?",
answer:
"Just like pages, there's no subscription. You buy 1-million-token packs at $1 each whenever you need more. Purchased tokens are added to your account immediately. You can buy up to 100 packs at a time.",
},
{
question:"What happens if I run out of premium tokens?",
answer:
"When your premium token balance runs low (below 20%), you'll see a warning. Once you run out, premium model requests are paused until you purchase more tokens. You can always switch to non-premium models which don't consume premium tokens.",
"Yes! When self-hosting, you have full control over your page and token limits. The default self-hosted setup gives you effectively unlimited pages and tokens, so you can index as much data and use as many AI queries as your infrastructure supports.",