Understanding Pages & Billing
Thought Cove meters ingestion in pages — but a “page” is a normalized unit of work, not always a literal printed page. Here’s exactly how it’s counted.
What counts as a page
Different formats carry different amounts of content per visual page, so each is normalized to a common unit:
| Format | One “page” equals |
|---|---|
| One actual page (tables and images on it are included free) | |
| Word (DOCX) | About 300 words |
| Excel / CSV | About 50 rows |
| Text / Markdown | About 2,000 characters |
So a 40-page PDF costs 40 pages, while a 5,000-row spreadsheet costs about 100. A PDF is always billed by its page count — tables inside it never switch it to the spreadsheet rate.
Why spreadsheets surprise people
A spreadsheet that looks small on screen can hold thousands of rows. At ~50 rows per page, a 10,000-row export bills as about 200 pages. If a file costs more than expected, check its row count first.
How credits work
- Your subscription includes a monthly page allowance for your tier.
- Need more? You can top up additional pages at any time.
- Credits are reserved before an ingestion run and automatically refunded if the pipeline fails — you’re never charged for a document that didn’t finish.
You can see your current balance any time on the Billing panel, and it updates live as ingestions complete.
Screenshot — The billing panel showing monthly and top-up page balances.
Asking questions does not consume ingestion pages — pages are spent when a document is ingested, not when you query it. So explore your Cove freely.