🎓 Cohort Mate: Great question — this usually comes down to how cohort credits are issued and how free-plan credits behave, not a partial grant that unlocks only after you upgrade.
How cohort credits work
• Credits are issued once per workspace, not per person.
• Joining credits are added automatically the week before the cohort starts.
• You can run a cohort on a free Clay account; during an active cohort your workspace gets Pro features enabled.
Why you might not see the “full” amount
• On a free account, credits expire at the end of each month. If some of the grant landed earlier (or you’re looking after month-end), the balance can look lower than the email described even though nothing was withheld for being on free.
• If the workspace was on a trial, joining credits are lost when the trial ends — so a trial → free (or trial end) transition is another common reason the balance drops.
If you upgrade
There’s no policy that upgrading a free plan automatically tops you back up to the original cohort credit amount. Upgrading mainly changes your ongoing plan/credit setup going forward; it doesn’t by itself restore expired or trial-lost cohort credits.
If you still think the grant never fully landed (vs. expired), reply with which cohort you just finished and the workspace email/domain from the credit email and I can pull in the right person to check the issuance.
