Zen credits become unusable before balance is exhausted #54242

Description

I am reporting a billing/limit issue on OpenCode Zen. I have a Go plan and paid Zen credits. My monthly Go quota is exhausted, and I have been using Zen credits successfully for several days. After my Zen credit balance dropped below $5, all requests to deepseek-v4.1-flash started failing with a 429 error.

I am not asking for a generic explanation of how auto-recharge works. Auto-recharge is already off, and I do not want it enabled. The problem is that my remaining Zen balance is still positive ($4.95), but the model is now blocked as if the account has exceeded its budget.

Environment

• OpenCode Zen dashboard
• Go plan: monthly limit reached
• Extra usage / "Use credits when a Go limit is reached": ON
• Auto-recharge: OFF
• Credit balance: $4.95 ("Running low")
• Model: deepseek-v4.1-flash (the self-hosted/non-routed variant, according to OpenCode)
• Monthly Go limit: 100% used
• Banner: "Monthly limit reached. Using credits for the next 1d 23h."

Steps to reproduce

1. Exhaust the monthly Go quota.
2. Keep Extra usage enabled so requests are billed to Zen credits.
3. Continue using deepseek-v4.1-flash with a positive Zen credit balance.
4. Spend Zen credits until the balance falls below $5.
5. Send another request to deepseek-v4.1-flash.

Expected behavior

The remaining Zen credits should continue to be usable. If I have $4.95 in credits and auto-recharge is off, requests should either succeed while deducting from the balance, or fail with a clear "insufficient credits" message when the balance is actually exhausted.

If there is a hidden minimum balance requirement for certain models, it should be documented. If there is no such requirement, the request should be allowed to consume the remaining $4.95.

Actual behavior

Every request now returns:

Error: 429: {"type":"server_error","message":"Upstream request failed: Account budget exceeded"}

The same error repeats for all requests. This started only after the balance dropped below $5. Before that, Zen credits were being used normally after the monthly Go limit was reached.

Relevant dashboard state

• Credits: $4.95
• Status: Running low
• Auto-recharge: off
• Extra usage: on
• Monthly limit: 100% used
• Monthly reset: in 1d 23h
• Weekly usage: 6% used
• Rolling usage: 0% used

Logs

Error: 429: {"type":"server_error","message":"Upstream request failed: Account budget exceeded"}
Error: 429: {"type":"server_error","message":"Upstream request failed: Account budget exceeded"}
Error: 429: {"type":"server_error","message":"Upstream request failed: Account budget exceeded"}
Error: 429: {"type":"server_error","message":"Upstream request failed: Account budget exceeded"}

Additional context

I found several related community reports:

• [BUG] Zen balance does not remove free usage cap; paid users still hit 200-request/free usage limit #33495: Zen balance does not remove free usage cap; paid users still hit 200-request/free usage limit
• [URGENT] Zen paid balance still hits FreeUsageLimitError / daily free usage limit. #33318: Zen paid balance still hits FreeUsageLimitError / daily free usage limit
• fix(ai): classify gateway account limits as quota and keep 4xx non-retryable #49195: PR classifying "Account budget exceeded" as LimitExceeded with status 429 and no automatic retry

These may be related. My case seems more specific: the failure begins when the Zen balance falls below $5, even though the balance is still positive and auto-recharge is off.

Questions

1. Is there an undocumented minimum balance requirement, such as $5, for deepseek-v4.1-flash or other specific models?
2. If yes, why is this not shown in the dashboard or documented?
3. If no, why is "Account budget exceeded" returned when the account still has $4.95 in credits and Extra usage is enabled?
4. Can the budget check be fixed so that remaining Zen credits can be spent down to $0?

I can provide my account ID and request IDs privately if needed.

Plugins

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OpenCode version

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Steps to reproduce

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Screenshot and/or share link

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Operating System

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Terminal

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