Credits, Tiers & Environments

Credits and rate limits are separate systems, and the test environment is free of only one of them.

Why it matters: a heavy test suite spends no credits but draws from the same per-tier rate-limit buckets as production. Throttle test runs the way you throttle live.

Credits are charged when a call returns data. The endpoint’s tier does not change the price. Rules: Billing & Credits.
Rate limits are per endpoint tier (1 to 4), sized by your service tier. Every endpoint in a tier shares one budget. Tables: Rate Limits.
Environments are a path segment. live consumes credits; test returns deterministic mock responses with production-identical schemas, so integration tests can assert on exact payloads. Details: Environments.

Go deeper: Check usage returns consumed credits, Introspect rate limits your per-tier allocation, and every response carries X-Rate-Limit-* headers so you can back off before a 429 (Rate Limit Headers).