Leonardo.AI Daily Credits Not Refilling: Fix and Explanation
You wake up, open Leonardo.AI for your morning generation session, and your credit counter still shows zero from the night before. The platform's documentation says daily tokens refresh every 24 hours, but it's been 26 hours and nothing has arrived. Or you subscribed to the Artisan plan, which includes both daily token allotments and API credits, and only one type refilled. This is more common than Leonardo's status page lets on, and the fix usually doesn't require a support ticket once you understand the actual mechanics.
What this error actually means
Leonardo.AI uses two separate token pools: daily free tokens (available to free accounts and as a supplement on paid plans) and subscription tokens (allocated monthly for paid plans). The confusion often starts because these two pools have different reset mechanics.
Daily free tokens reset at a fixed UTC time, not relative to when you signed up or when you last used the platform. This reset runs as a scheduled job on Leonardo's backend. If that job experiences a delay (due to a deployment event, a database maintenance window, or a backend queue backup), the reset can be hours late.
Subscription tokens are tied to your billing cycle anniversary, not a daily UTC clock. If you subscribed on the 14th of last month, your monthly subscription tokens reset on the 14th of this month, regardless of when during the day you subscribed.
When users report "credits not refilling," they're often conflating these two pools or expecting both to reset at the same time when they actually reset independently on different schedules.
Quick fix (when you need it working in 60 seconds)
- Check the exact token type you're looking at. In Leonardo's dashboard, click your profile icon and look at the credit breakdown. It shows daily tokens and subscription tokens separately.
- Log out and log back in. Leonardo's credit display is cached per session; a fresh login fetches the current server-side balance.
- Clear your browser cache and cookies for app.leonardo.ai, then log in again.
- Check Leonardo's official Discord server (discord.gg/leonardo-ai) for announcements about delayed token resets. These are posted there before the status page updates.
- If your daily tokens are still at zero after logging out and back in, note the current time in UTC and wait until the next 24-hour mark from your account's reset time.
Why this happens
Credit reset issues at Leonardo.AI come from several sources.
UTC reset time vs. local time confusion. Leonardo's daily free token reset happens at a fixed UTC time (historically around 00:00 UTC). If you're in UTC-8 (Pacific time), your tokens refresh at 4:00 PM Pacific, not midnight. Many users expect midnight local time and check before the reset has happened.
Session cache showing stale balance. Leonardo's web app fetches your token balance on login and caches it for the session. If you logged in before the reset and stayed logged in, your displayed balance won't update until you refresh. This is the most common cause of "my credits didn't refill" reports.
Backend reset job delays. Leonardo uses batch processing to reset daily tokens across all accounts. During peak server load or after platform deployments, this batch job can run 1 to 4 hours late. If you're in a timezone where the reset is already close to a time when you'd normally check, a 2-hour delay looks like a missing reset.
Plan change edge cases. If you upgraded or downgraded your plan within the current billing cycle, the token pool recalculation sometimes produces an incorrect balance. The system may not correctly add the delta between your old plan's allocation and your new plan's allocation.
Two-device access discrepancy. If you use Leonardo from both a browser and a mobile device, the cached balance across these may differ. One device shows zero credits because it cached the pre-reset state; the other shows the correct post-reset balance.
API credits vs. app credits are separate. For paid subscribers using the Leonardo API, API credits are a distinct pool from the credits shown in the web app. The API credits page is at app.leonardo.ai/api, not the main dashboard. Many users check the wrong pool.
Permanent fix
These steps eliminate the recurring confusion and catch any genuine account issues.
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Find your actual daily reset time. In Leonardo's app, go to your profile and look for "Token Reset Time" in your account details. If it's not shown there, check your welcome email from Leonardo when you signed up. It should specify the UTC reset time for your account.
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Set a browser-side reminder. Once you know your reset time in local terms, set a calendar reminder or browser notification for 5 minutes after that time. Check Leonardo then, after logging out and logging back in.
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Always do a fresh login to check balances. Never trust the credit counter from an active session that's been running for more than a few hours. Log out, log in, then check. This takes 10 seconds and eliminates false reports of missing credits.
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Understand your plan's token structure. Go to leonardo.ai/pricing and read your plan's description. Note: how many daily tokens you get, how many monthly subscription tokens you get, and whether your plan includes API credits. Write these numbers down. When you think tokens are missing, you can verify against the documented allocation.
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Check your billing date for monthly token reset. In Leonardo's billing settings, find your subscription start date. Your monthly subscription tokens reset on that day each month. If it's the 8th today and your billing date is the 14th, your monthly tokens aren't due for another 6 days regardless of what the daily token status is.
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For API credit issues, check the API credits page separately. Navigate directly to app.leonardo.ai/api-keys and look at the API credits section there. API credit balances are not shown on the main dashboard.
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If you upgraded recently, contact support. Plan upgrades with mid-cycle token recalculations are the one case where genuine account issues occur. File a support ticket at leonardo.ai/support with your account email, your previous plan, your new plan, and the date you upgraded. Include a screenshot of your current token breakdown. Resolution typically takes 24-48 hours.
Prevention
The fundamental prevention is treating your Leonardo credit balance as something to verify with a fresh session, not as a live counter you can trust throughout a long working session. Build the logout-login habit into your daily workflow start routine.
Keep a simple note in your project management tool or a sticky note on your monitor showing: your Leonardo plan's daily token count, your monthly token count, your reset times in local time, and your billing date. Having these reference points means you can instantly calculate whether a balance looks right rather than guessing.
If you're doing volume creative work and running into credit limits regularly, audit your generation settings. Using lower resolution for ideation and concept work, reserving high-resolution generation for final outputs, can extend your daily token budget significantly.
For team use cases, remember that Leonardo accounts are individual. Sharing credentials across multiple team members will cause unpredictable token depletion that looks like a refilling issue. Each team member should have a separate account with their own plan.
When the fix doesn't work
If you've done a fresh login, confirmed your reset time, checked both token pools, and your balance is still incorrect by more than 20% of your plan's allocation, this is a genuine billing or account issue that requires support intervention. File a ticket with Leonardo's support team at support.leonardo.ai. Provide your account email, a screenshot of your credit breakdown, your plan name, and the date the issue started.
For immediate work that can't wait for credit reset, Leonardo's "Alchemy" and premium generation features do have a credit purchase option for buying additional tokens outside your plan allocation.