What it costs
AI translation is a $5 add-on, activated per election through Stripe Checkout. Each activation adds 50,000 source characters to that election's translation pool. It's separate from your roster-tier payment (the free/$19/$49/$99 pricing described in Pricing tiers & upgrading a launched election) — you can activate AI translations on a free-tier election, and a paid-tier election still needs its own $5 activation to use it.
What counts as a character
The pool is spent on source characters — the text you wrote, not the translated output — counted once per language you translate into. Translating a 40-character question into Spanish deducts 40 characters, and translating it into French deducts another 40, because each language is a separate call to the translation service. Re-translating a field you've already translated (via Re-translate all) likewise deducts its source characters again.
If a translation call fails partway through — a transient service error, for example — the characters for the fields that didn't successfully translate are credited back to your pool rather than lost.
Rebuying
There's no cap on activations. If a pool runs dry, activating again adds another 50,000 characters on top of anything left over — activations always stack, they never reset or expire.
If the pool runs out
Auto-translate simply stops once a request would need more characters than remain in the pool: nothing is charged, no field is partially translated, and your existing translations are untouched. Activate the add-on again to top up the pool, or translate the rest by hand in the translation editor at no additional cost.
Refunds
Refunds for the AI-translations add-on are handled the same way as other payments — case-by-case, by a human. Reply to your Stripe payment receipt email or use the contact form and describe the situation. There's no self-serve refund button in the app.