Bulk scans

A bulk scan launches every query under a topic (or a subset you select) at once, in a single HTTP roundtrip. You'd use it to seed a new workspace, take a snapshot before a launch, or refresh data when you've added new prompts.

When to use bulk vs single scan

Use case	Pick
Iterating on a new prompt and want to see if it produces signal	Single scan
Snapshotting your whole topic at a point in time	Bulk scan
Seeding a brand-new workspace with baseline data	Bulk scan
Testing a hypothesis about a specific competitor surge	Single scan on a targeted query
Pre/post comparison for a launch (run before, run after)	Bulk scan twice

How to run a bulk scan

Open any topic detail page
Click Bulk run (top-right action button)
Pick how many queries to include — up to 25 in one bulk batch
Confirm and run

The dispatcher launches each query's four-LLM call sequentially per query (so per-query free-tier enforcement still applies), with the platform calls within each query running in parallel.

Typical bulk timing:

Queries	Wall-clock time
5	~2 minutes
10	~4 minutes
25	~10 minutes

You can leave the page while it runs. Each individual scan's status updates live in the scans list — pending → running → completed.

Quota accounting

Each query in a bulk counts as one scan. A 25-query bulk uses 25 against your monthly scan cap.

For free-tier orgs:

The dispatcher does an up-front check before any scan starts: "is there room for this whole bulk in both the lifetime cap and the hourly cap?"
If not, you get a clean error before any work begins — no half-completed bulks

For BYOK orgs there's no cap, but the dispatcher still serializes the per-query loop so the free-tier flow stays uniform.

What happens if a scan in the bulk fails

A single scan failing inside a bulk doesn't abort the rest. You'll see:

24/25 scans completed
1/25 scan marked failed with the platform-level error

The Inngest worker retries transient failures (5xx, timeouts) automatically. Permanent failures (content policy blocks, malformed prompts) mark the scan failed and the dispatcher moves on.

Bulk + scheduled

A scheduled scan can run a bulk on a cadence — daily, weekly, or monthly. Set the schedule on the topic detail page; choose which queries to include. The schedule fires through Inngest, off the Vercel 60-second function-timeout path, so even a 25-query Monday-morning bulk completes reliably.

See Scheduled scans for the full setup.

Cost expectations (BYOK)

A 25-query bulk on BYOK across all four platforms costs approximately:

Free models / cheap-tier (gated) — N/A; bulk requires BYOK or pro tier
GPT-4o / Claude Sonnet / Gemini Pro / Perplexity Sonar — $0.15 – $0.40 per bulk

That's a small fraction of the per-month value of having weekly snapshots. Most workspaces run 1–2 bulks per week.