Yes credits and caching are related in that it costs credits to create a cache. By attempting to cache all 20 levels, depending on the extent of your data, you could be creating millions of tiles. The cost for tile generation is 1 credit per 1000 tiles. So generating a million tiles would cost 1000 credits.
There is a Manage Tiles option on the item details page of the service. From here, you can selectively build tiles for the scales you need. The larger the scale, the more tiles will be created. The system will show you how many tiles will be required for each scale.
ArcGIS Online currently supports two types of hosted services: Tiled map services and feature services. Depending on how you intend to use your data and how much there is, you may consider creating a feature service instead of a tiled service. In ArcMap, during the publishing process, you would check the Feature Access capability and uncheck Tiled Mapping. Feature services have a different set of abilities, so it would be worthwhile to learn about it to make sure it suits your needs.
Thanks,
Mike