What Does Odoo 20 AI Cost? IAP Credits Explained for Australian Businesses

Odoo 20, released on 24 September 2026, charges for AI through IAP credits. Odoo’s IAP page lists the Odoo AI service at €1.00 per credit, in packs of 10 to 1,000, with 20 free credits and no expiry, as at 6 October 2026. Odoo publishes no rate per feature: usage varies with the feature, the task and the size of the request, so the budget has to be measured.

At a glance

• Who it is for: owners, finance managers and Odoo administrators of Australian businesses on Odoo 20, or on Odoo 19 and planning the upgrade.
• Problem it solves: on Odoo 19 most businesses never saw a bill for AI. On Odoo 20 every AI feature draws on a prepaid balance, some of them on a schedule with nobody watching, and nobody has been named as the owner of that balance.
• Platforms: Odoo 20 with the AI app (Odoo Online, Odoo.sh and on-premise). MYOB Acumatica prices its AI differently and is out of scope here.
• Typical cost: €1.00 per credit in packs of 10, 100, 500 and 1,000 credits, with 20 free credits, per Odoo’s IAP page for the Odoo AI service as at 6 October 2026. The page showed euros where we read it and we have not read an Australian dollar price, so none is quoted; the Buy Credit screen in your own database shows what you will be charged.
• Typical timeline: under an hour to name an owner and set the low-credit alert; about two weeks of normal use to measure what your features burn.
• What uses credits: every AI feature, per the release notes: AI chat and agents, AI fields, AI server actions, agent sources and call transcription.
• What does not: an outside assistant connected through the Odoo 20 MCP server (its own provider bills you instead), and document digitisation, which is a separate IAP service with its own balance.
• Last verified: 6 October 2026 against the Odoo 20 release notes, Odoo’s IAP page for the Odoo AI service, Odoo’s 20.0 in-app purchase documentation and the Odoo 20 Enterprise source code.

The line in the release notes is one sentence long: “All AI features now need credits, which can be bought via IAP.” It heads the AI section, above a long list of new agent features, and it changes who needs to care about them. AI in Odoo used to be an IT question. On Odoo 20 it is also a small, recurring, prepaid cost that somebody has to own. This post covers what Odoo has published, what it hasn’t, and how we budget for it.

For the subscription itself (Standard, Custom and the new light user), see our Odoo pricing guide for Australia. Credits are on top of that.

What does Odoo 20 AI cost?

IAP stands for in-app purchase: Odoo’s prepaid credit system for metered services such as SMS and document digitisation. Odoo 20 adds a service called Odoo AI to that list. As at 6 October 2026 its IAP page shows the following.

A few things to notice. There is no volume discount, so there is no reason to buy the big pack early. The same page says credits stay on the account until they are used, so a small pack does not go stale. And each database starts with 20 free credits; Odoo’s in-app purchase documentation says Enterprise users with a valid subscription get free credits to test IAP features before buying more.

What the page does not give you is the number you want most: how many credits a task costs. Its wording is that usage “varies based on the specific AI feature, task complexity, and the size of your request.” In the Odoo 20 Enterprise source, the Odoo AI service is defined with a balance that is not held in whole numbers, which suggests a single request usually costs a fraction of a credit. That is as far as the published material goes, and we won’t guess a figure.

Which Odoo 20 features use credits, and which don’t?

We checked each feature against the release notes, the 20.0 documentation and the Odoo 20 Enterprise source as at 6 October 2026.

The right-hand column is the one to read twice. Chat costs credits only while a person is using it, and people notice when it stops. The unattended rows spend while everyone is asleep. We went through the scheduling side in our post on Odoo 20 agents that run unattended, and the permission side of the MCP route in our Odoo 20 MCP server post.

The MCP row deserves a note. When you connect an outside assistant to Odoo 20 through the built-in MCP server, the reasoning happens in that assistant’s model, on that vendor’s bill. We found no call to the Odoo AI service in the MCP module. So heavy analysis done through an assistant your staff already pay a seat for does not touch the credit balance. The cost still exists. It’s on a different invoice.

Where do you see the balance and set an alert?

Per the 20.0 in-app purchase documentation, the path is the Settings app, Contacts section, Odoo IAP, View My Services. Open the Odoo AI service and you get the balance, a Buy Credit button, and two fields that matter more than either: Email Alert Threshold and Email Alert Recipients. Odoo 20 also adds a My Subscription page under the user menu that brings the plan and IAP services together, per the release notes.

Set the threshold and put two names in the recipients field: the person who owns the budget and the person who administers Odoo. The next section is why.

What happens when the credits run out?

This is where reading the code earned its keep. In the Odoo 20 Enterprise source as at 6 October 2026:

• A person using AI chat gets a notification that reads “Not enough credits to use Odoo AI” and can go and buy more.
• A scheduled action gets no such notification. The code skips it when the request came from a scheduled job. The run is marked as failed and a line goes in the server log.
• Background indexing of agent sources stops at the first refused batch and leaves the remainder for a later run.

Nothing is lost and nothing is corrupted. But an agent that drafts follow-ups every morning will stop drafting them, and the first sign may be a buyer asking where this morning’s drafts went. The email alert is the only warning that arrives before that point, which is why it gets set on day one.

Can you still use your own OpenAI or Google key on Odoo 20?

On Odoo 19, Odoo.sh and on-premise databases needed your own provider key, and the provider billed you, per Odoo’s 19.0 AI API key documentation. For Odoo 20 we can’t give a clean answer yet, and we’d sooner say so than guess.

Here is what we can see. The release notes say all AI features need credits, and that you pick a provider and Odoo selects the model. In the 20.0 Enterprise source we read, the AI app sends its requests to Odoo’s own AI service using the database’s IAP account, and we found no setting for a customer’s provider key in that module. Odoo’s 20.0 page on AI API keys was marked as under construction when we checked it on 5 October 2026.

So if your Odoo 19 database runs AI on your own key, don’t assume that carries over. Ask Odoo in writing before the upgrade, and budget for credits until you have the answer. The same question matters for privacy. If prompts and the record data inside them go to Odoo’s AI service and on to a model provider, you need to know where that processing happens to meet your obligations under the Australian Privacy Principles. The release notes also say agent conversations are now stored for up to 30 days after the last message.

A worked example: budgeting credits for a plumbing-supplies wholesaler

Picture a Queensland plumbing-supplies wholesaler with 25 users, upgraded to Odoo 20. It has three AI uses. An AI field writes website descriptions for new products. A scheduled agent reads overdue purchase orders at 6am and drafts a follow-up email to each supplier. And the sales team uses AI chat to look things up.

Odoo doesn’t publish a rate, so the finance manager measures one. She buys the 100-credit Standard pack and sets the alert threshold at 25 credits, with herself and the Odoo administrator as recipients. On a Tuesday the administrator runs the description field over one category of 200 products and she reads the balance before and after. That gives credits per product, and the catalogue count gives the one-off cost of the backlog. They do the same with one week of the morning agent: balance on Monday, balance on Friday, divided by the drafts it produced.

Two decisions follow. The backlog of old products gets described in batches, one category a week, so the spend is visible. And the agent keeps its approval gate: it creates each email as a draft with an activity for the purchasing officer, who reads it, fixes the tone where the supplier relationship needs it, and presses send. The agent never sends, and it never changes a purchase order. If the credits run dry on a Thursday, the drafts stop, the alert has already gone to two inboxes, and nothing has reached a supplier that a person didn’t approve.

Credits are the first AI cost in Odoo that can start without anyone approving it. A field someone adds in Studio on a Friday can be spending money by Saturday morning. So we treat the balance like petty cash: a named owner, a float, an alert, and a look each month at what it bought.

Josh Craig, Director, Auboros

How to keep the credit bill small without switching AI off

• Give the balance an owner. One named person in finance, with the alert going to them and to the Odoo administrator.
• Audit the unattended jobs first. List every AI field and every scheduled or automated action that calls an agent. If the daily AI Fields action has nothing useful to fill, deactivate it. Our Odoo 20 upgrade checklist for AI settings walks through where each one lives.
• Filter before the agent, not inside it. A scheduled agent that reads only overdue orders costs less than one asked to look at all orders and decide which are overdue. Let the domain filter do the free work.
• Keep agent sources lean. Every document and web page you attach is indexed, and reprocessing draws credits again. Attach the price list, not the shared drive.
• Measure, then record. Put a monthly credit budget beside each agent in your AI agent register, and compare it with the balance at month end.
• Buy small. Every pack is the same price per credit and credits don’t expire, so the 100-credit pack and a working alert beat a 1,000-credit pack nobody is watching.

Credits are the model-usage line, one of five we cost in what an AI agent costs to run in Australia. ERP access, hosting, review time and governance overhead are the others. Review time is the real cost, and it’s the one you shouldn’t cut, because the person approving the draft is the control. That holds for every build in our AI agents for ERP in Australia practice.

Goes well with

• Upgrading to Odoo 20: the seven AI settings to check the morning after: where each credit-spending setting lives and what to do with it on day one.
• Odoo 20 agents that run unattended: how to design the scheduled jobs that spend credits while nobody is watching.
• What an AI agent costs to run in Australia: the other four cost lines, with a worked example.

Want a credit budget before you upgrade to Odoo 20?

Auboros is an Odoo partner in Brisbane that runs drafts-first AI agents over live Odoo databases across Queensland and beyond. We can list what will draw on your credits after the upgrade, measure it in a pilot, and set the alerts and approval gates before the first scheduled run. Book a free consultation and bring your Odoo 19 database; we’ll tell you plainly which AI features are worth paying for.