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Documentation Index

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Lava bills paid providers from your account balance. Free providers run without funds; paid providers (most model APIs and many data services) charge per call. This guide covers funding, balance checks, usage history, and what to do when a call fails on insufficient balance. “Wallet” and “balance” refer to the same number on your account — the dashboard says “wallet”; your chat usually says “balance”.

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Prerequisites

On Team or Enterprise Claude accounts. A Claude org admin must enable Lava at the org level before any member can fund a wallet through it. See Install for a Team or Enterprise Workspace for the admin and member setup.

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Add Funds via the Dashboard

The dashboard is the simplest path for the first deposit, since it lets you save a payment method for later in-chat top-ups.
  1. Open https://www.lava.so/dashboard/wallet.
  2. Click “Add Funds”.
  3. Enter an amount between 10and10 and 10,000.
  4. Add a payment method or select a saved one.
  5. Confirm the charge.
Expected result. Your wallet balance increases by the amount you charged. The new balance shows in the dashboard header.

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Add Funds from Your Chat

Once you have a saved payment method, you can top up without leaving the chat. Type: 
Add $25 to my Lava wallet.
What happens next depends on what’s on your account:
  • You have a saved payment method. Lava charges it directly and replies with the new balance.
  • You have no saved payment method. Lava replies with a checkout link. Open it, complete payment in the browser, and return to your chat.
  • You didn’t say how much to add. Lava replies with your saved payment methods and current balance so you can pick one and pick an amount.
The minimum charge is 10.Themaximumis10. The maximum is 10,000. Expected result. After a successful charge, asking your chat for your balance returns the new total.

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Check Your Balance

From the chat: 
What's my Lava balance?
Your chat replies with your current balance in USD: 
// Lava sends back:
{
  "balance": "47.50"
}
The dashboard’s wallet page (https://www.lava.so/dashboard/wallet) shows the same balance, plus a chart of recent activity.

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Review Usage

Lava tracks every call your chat makes. Two views:

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Daily Summary (Default)

Ask the chat for a summary: 
Show me my Lava usage for the last 7 days.
Your chat replies with daily totals — spend per day, request counts per day, broken out by service. To widen the window, just name the date you want to start from: 
Show me my Lava usage since April 1.

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Per-Request List

To see individual calls instead of daily totals, ask: 
Show me my last 20 Lava requests with cost breakdown.
Each entry shows the service, the model (when relevant), the cost, and whether the call succeeded.

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Insufficient-Balance Behavior

When a paid call would exceed your balance, Lava stops it before it runs and your chat tells you: 
// Lava sends back:
{
  "error": "Insufficient wallet balance",
  "code": 402
}
The call did not run; you weren’t charged.

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How to Recover

  1. Top up the wallet — see Add Funds from Your Chat above. The minimum is $10.
  2. Retry the call.
If you hit insufficient-balance often and want a buffer, set a higher balance from the dashboard and skim your recent usage to size your top-ups against actual spend.

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Spend Keys (Advanced)

Lava also supports Spend Keys — API keys with a wallet attached, useful for sharing budget with agents or other tools without sharing your account. Spend Keys are configured outside the MCP. See Spend Keys overview for setup.

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Troubleshooting

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”I funded but the chat still shows zero balance”

Some AI chats cache balance. Ask the chat for the balance again, or refresh the dashboard.

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”Payment method failed”

Check the dashboard for the failure reason. Common causes: card declined by the issuer, expired card, billing address mismatch. Update the payment method in https://www.lava.so/dashboard/wallet and retry.

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”I want to charge in a currency other than USD”

Lava bills in USD only. Currency conversion happens at the card issuer’s exchange rate.

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Next Steps