On November 1, 2026 at 00:00 UTC, DanceGAI credits move to a new system. Free credits now come every month, based on the accounts you connect. Invite rewards are paid in two steps, and both you and your friend get each one. Credits you already have are not touched. This post covers what changes, what stays the same, and why.
Until then, everything works exactly as it does today. The switch happens for every account at the same moment: 00:00 UTC on November 1, which is 08:00 on November 1 in Taipei and 20:00 on October 31 in New York.
Monthly free credits
On a Free account, you get free credits for each kind of account you connect:
- A verified email (or signing in with Google): +2 a month
- An osu! account (connected through osu! sign-in): +3 a month
- Both: 5 a month
Months follow UTC. On the 1st of each month your monthly credits are set to your allowance. Unused ones don’t carry over, so they never pile up. If you connect an email or osu! partway through a month, that part of the allowance is added right away. You don’t have to wait for the 1st.
One generation still costs one credit (one ManiaGAI or OsuGAI mapset). Monthly credits are used first. Your other credits are used only when the monthly ones run out.
Credits you already have
Everything in your balance today stays there as bonus credits: credits from signing up, invites, promotions and compensation. Bonus credits never expire, and the monthly reset never touches them. We checked this against a copy of every existing account before release. Each one kept exactly the balance it had.
If a generation fails
A failed or cancelled generation is refunded to the pool it came from. A monthly credit goes back to your monthly credits and a bonus credit goes back to your bonus credits. There’s one exception: if the refund arrives after the month has ended, a monthly credit from that month is not added to the new month, because last month’s unused credits have already reset. Every charge, refund and reset is recorded on your account, so nothing is added or lost by accident.
Invites: two rewards, both of you
For invite codes redeemed from November 1, an invite pays in two separate steps:
- When your friend connects a verified email: +2 for you and +2 for them
- When your friend connects osu!: +3 for you and +3 for them
Invite credits are bonus credits, so they never expire. A few rules keep invites fair:
- Redeeming a code doesn’t pay anything by itself. The rewards come when your friend connects real accounts. Each step pays once per invite.
- You receive your side once you have connected the same kind of account (an email for the email step, osu! for the osu! step). Until then your reward waits for you, and it’s paid as soon as you connect.
- As the inviter, you can receive up to 20 invite credits per UTC month. Rewards over that limit are not paid later. Your friend’s rewards have no limit.
- Invite codes are for new accounts, within 14 days of signing up.
- Each email address and each osu! account can earn the invited-friend reward once, whichever DanceGAI account it’s on.
- Inviting yourself doesn’t pay. That includes using a second address of your own, and for Gmail addresses dots and “+tags” count as the same inbox. If two accounts that invited each other are later joined into one, the rewards between them are taken back.
The invite panel on the pricing page shows your progress. It shows what each friend has unlocked, what is waiting for you to connect an account, and how much of this month’s 20 you have used.
Invites made before November 1
A code redeemed before November 1 keeps the rules it was redeemed under. Your friend got +5 when they redeemed it, and you get +3 when they finish their first generation. Those invites are not paid again under the new rules. From November 1, that +3 counts toward the same 20-a-month limit as new invite rewards.
One person, one set of monthly credits
Monthly credits belong to the email address or osu! account, not to the DanceGAI account it happens to be on. Each one gives its credits once a month. Moving your osu! account to another account, changing your email, verifying again or connecting the same account twice doesn’t add more. If you connect an email or osu! account that already belongs to another of your DanceGAI accounts, the two accounts are joined. Your bonus credits and your maps carry over, and you still get at most 5 monthly credits for that month.
Why we changed it
Free credits are what let anyone try DanceGAI without paying. Under the old rules, invite bonuses could be collected by creating accounts with extra email addresses and inviting yourself. Every credit taken that way is GPU time that real players don’t get. The new system ties free credits to real accounts. Your email gives +2 a month, your osu! account gives +3, and invites pay when a friend actually connects. That makes inviting yourself pointless and lets everyone get credits back every month.