Honey explained
Honey is the single credit unit that powers everything the Swarm does. Instead of metering models, tokens, and reviews separately, SwarmADE charges one consistent unit so you always know what a run costs. Every plan includes a monthly Honey allowance, and you only pay for what the Swarm actually does.
What consumes Honey
Three kinds of work draw down your balance:
- Queen planning passes — when the Queen decomposes a spec into a task graph and validates it.
- Drone review runs — each automated audit a Drone performs on a completed task.
- SwarmMemory cloud features — cloud sync and semantic search, when enabled.
Idle workspaces cost nothing, and Worker CLI calls never draw Honey — they bill against your own CLI subscription. Honey is spent only on the server-side work above. For a per-action breakdown, see What consumes Honey.
Allowances reset monthly
Your plan’s Honey allowance refills at the start of every billing cycle. The allowance is sized for continuous use rather than long-term saving, so unspent allowance Honey does not accumulate from one cycle to the next.
Your balance has two parts. Allowance Honey comes with your plan and resets each billing cycle. Top-up Honey is purchased separately, carries forward across renewals, and never expires at reset. The Swarm spends your monthly allowance first, then dips into top-up Honey — so top-ups act as a floor that survives the cycle.
Monitoring your balance
The desktop app shows a live Honey counter in the Hive header, so you can watch consumption as the Swarm works. Open the Honey ledger from that counter to see a transaction history: allowance renewals, top-ups, per-task consumption, and any refunds. This makes it easy to spot which Hives or task types are spending the most.
Where to go next
- What consumes Honey — the full per-action cost reference.
- Topup brackets — buy extra Honey in tiered amounts.
If your live counter is running low mid-cycle, a top-up adds Honey immediately without changing your plan.