Novelcrafter Pricing (2026): Every Plan, Plus the AI Cost

Novelcrafter costs $4 to $20 a month, with two months off on annual billing. AI starts at the $8 Hobbyist tier and isn't included: you connect your own key and pay your provider separately, from $0 on free models to several dollars a month at steady use on a mid-priced model, and more for heavy premium use. There's a 21-day free trial, but no permanent free plan.

The headline price of Novelcrafter is easy to find. The number most people actually want is harder: what a month really costs once the AI is switched on. This guide gives you both. Every Novelcrafter figure below comes from its own pricing and help pages, read on 13 October 2026, and the AI costs are worked out from live model prices with every assumption shown, so you can swap in your own numbers. We make NovelCanon, which is also bring-your-own-key, so we'll compare the two at the end.

Key takeaways

• Four plans, $4 to $20 a month. Scribe $4, Hobbyist $8, Artisan $14, Specialist $20, billed monthly. Annual billing takes two months off.
• AI starts at Hobbyist and is never included. Novelcrafter doesn't provide an AI model, so the AI bill comes from your provider on top of the plan.
• The model matters more than the word count. On our assumptions, 300 drafting requests a month cost about $0.38 on a low-cost model and $37.50 on a premium one.
• The free option is a 21-day trial, not a free plan, though free models can make the AI itself cost nothing.
• No discounts of any kind, including for students, and no holiday sales. The annual discount is the only saving.
• NovelCanon, which we make, is also bring-your-own-key, with AI on every plan, including a free one. Paid plans start at $7 a month ($5 billed yearly); the comparison is below.

How much does Novelcrafter cost?

Novelcrafter costs $4, $8, $14 or $20 a month depending on the plan, and two months are free if you pay yearly. Here are all four plans side by side.

Plan	Billed monthly	Billed yearly, per month	What it adds	AI?
Scribe	$4	about $3.33	Unlimited books, series and universes, the Codex and basic review tools	None
Hobbyist	$8	about $6.67	AI on your own key: scene summaries, character extraction and scene-beat generation	Yes, your key
Artisan	$14	about $11.67	Workshop Chat, on top of Hobbyist	Yes, your key
Specialist	$20	about $16.67	Invite others into your novels and series (co-writing and teams)	Yes, your key

Source: Novelcrafter's pricing page, 13 October 2026. The yearly figures apply its "2 Months off" badge (ten months' price for twelve) and are our arithmetic, not its listed numbers. Check the page for current terms.

What does each Novelcrafter plan include?

Each plan includes everything in the one below it, so the question is where you need to stop.

• Scribe ($4) is the writing and organising side only: unlimited books, series and universes, the Codex and basic review tools. It has no AI, not even the option to connect your own key.
• Hobbyist ($8) is the cheapest way to use AI. It adds bring-your-own-key, so the app can summarise scenes, extract characters into your Codex and generate prose from scene beats using your provider.
• Artisan ($14) adds Workshop Chat, a conversation panel for brainstorming and feedback. If you plan to talk to the AI about your book rather than only generate scenes, this is the tier.
• Specialist ($20) lets you invite other people into your novels and series. Being invited as a viewer or editor is available on every plan, so a co-writer doesn't need Specialist to join your book; only the person doing the inviting does.

Is Novelcrafter free?

Not permanently: it has a 21-day free trial, then paid plans. During the trial you get every feature unlocked, and the pricing page says no credit card is required. After that there are four paid plans and no free tier.

Two things can lower the bill. Annual billing takes two months off, and the AI side can cost nothing if you use free models, which we cover below. What you can't get is a discount: the pricing page says Novelcrafter doesn't offer them to students, educators or non-profits, and it runs no Black Friday or holiday sales.

How much does the AI cost on top of Novelcrafter?

Novelcrafter doesn't sell AI, so you pay a provider directly, and the amount depends almost entirely on which model you pick. Its help center says it doesn't "offer any AI model ourselves," and that separating the cost of the software from the cost of AI lets you choose your own model and control your spending. In practice you create an account with a provider such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Google or OpenRouter, add a key to Novelcrafter and top up credit.

Providers charge by the token, which is roughly three-quarters of a word. You pay one rate for what you send in (your scene, your Codex entries, your instructions) and a higher rate for what comes back. These are live prices on OpenRouter on 13 October 2026, for three example models:

Example model	Input, per million tokens	Output, per million tokens	Price band
Claude Haiku 5.5	$0.10	$0.50	Low-cost
Claude Sonnet 5.5	$2.00	$10.00	Mid-priced
Claude Fable 5.1	$10.00	$50.00	Premium

To turn that into a monthly figure we need an assumption about a request. Novelcrafter doesn't publish typical request sizes, so these are ours: a drafting request sends about 8,000 tokens in (roughly 6,000 words of earlier prose, Codex entries and instructions) and gets about 900 tokens back (roughly 675 words of freshly written prose). Here's what that costs over a month:

Requests a month	Low-cost model	Mid-priced model	Premium model
60, an occasional helper	$0.07	$1.50	$7.50
300, steady drafting	$0.38	$7.50	$37.50
1,000, heavy use	$1.25	$25.00	$125.00

Our own logs show how much request size matters. Across the 42 AI generations we logged in NovelCanon, the average used about 665 tokens in and 466 out, and the average paid action cost under a cent, because those were shorter assistant actions than the drafting request assumed above. If you trim what Novelcrafter sends with each request, your bill shrinks in proportion. Our full cost breakdown shows the working.

Other pricing guides quote anything from $10 to $50 a month for AI. Our sums say that range is reachable, but mainly when you generate often on mid-priced or premium models, or regenerate a lot. Even the extreme case, an entire 80,000-word draft written by the AI in about 119 requests, costs roughly $0.15 on the low-cost model, $2.98 on the mid-priced one and $14.88 on the premium one; triple that if you regenerate everything three times.

To spend nothing on AI, Novelcrafter's help pages describe two routes. OpenRouter offers free models you can try, though its pricing for them changes regularly, so a model that's free today may not be next month. You can also run a local model on your own computer, where, as the help center puts it, the only price is your electricity bill. OpenRouter is prepaid, so your spend can't run past what you've topped up, and you can put a credit limit on the key; check your remaining balance on OpenRouter's own page.

What will a month of Novelcrafter really cost?

Between about $8 and about $21 in three of the four examples below, and over $100 only if you generate heavily on a premium model. Here are four months, billed monthly, using the numbers above.

Writer	Plan	AI, on our assumptions	Total a month	Billed yearly
Planner who uses AI occasionally	Hobbyist, $8	60 requests, low-cost model: $0.07	about $8	about $6.74
Free-model experimenter	Hobbyist, $8	Free models: $0	$8	about $6.67
Steady drafter	Artisan, $14	300 requests, mid-priced model: $7.50	$21.50	about $19.17
Heavy premium user	Artisan, $14	1,000 requests, premium model: $125	$139	about $136.67

Two lessons come out of that table. First, the plan price is a small part of the bill once you generate a lot, so choosing a cheaper model saves far more than choosing a cheaper plan. Second, you control the AI side completely: switch models, cut the context, or set a credit limit, and the bill follows.

How can you keep the AI bill low?

Match the model to the job, and watch the first week. The biggest savings take no effort:

• Use a cheaper model for cheap jobs. Brainstorming names or summarising a scene doesn't need a premium model. Save that for the passages you care about most.
• Send less. Every extra Codex entry or old scene in a request is paid for at the input rate. Include what the scene needs and no more.
• Cap the key. Set a credit limit on your provider's key a little above what you expect to spend, so a mistake can't run up a bill.
• Check after the first week. Your provider's activity page shows what each message cost. Multiply by how often you write and you have your real number.
• Try free models first for low-stakes work, remembering they can change or disappear.

What are Novelcrafter's billing rules?

You can cancel any time, change plans any time, and your novels stay readable afterwards. From its pricing page:

• Trial: 21 days with all features. If you carry on, you're charged the monthly or yearly price when it ends.
• Cancelling: you keep your plan until the end of the billing cycle and aren't charged again.
• After you cancel: you keep read-only access to your data, so export your manuscript first.
• Changing plans or billing frequency: allowed at any time, with the prorated amount charged for the rest of the month.
• Discounts: none for students, educators or non-profits, and no holiday sales.

How does Novelcrafter pricing compare with NovelCanon?

Both are bring-your-own-key, so you pay your provider directly in both, and the AI bill is the same for the same model and the same usage; what differs is the software price and what comes with it.

	Novelcrafter	NovelCanon
Free option	21-day trial	14 days of Pro, then a free plan: 1 project, up to 3 chapters
Cheapest paid plan	Scribe, $4 a month (about $3.33 yearly), no AI	Manuscript, $7 a month ($5 yearly), with AI
AI on your own key	From Hobbyist, $8 a month (about $6.67 yearly); chat from Artisan, $14	On every plan, Free included: 20 AI actions a day on Free and Manuscript; Pro ($15 a month, $12 yearly) has no daily limit and a spending cap you set
Using free AI models	Needs Hobbyist: $8 a month	$0 on the free plan
Consistency	The Codex, planning views and review tools help you spot problems yourself	As-you-write checks on every plan; a whole-book contradiction check on Pro
Co-writing and teams	Specialist, $20 a month	One author at a time
Annual billing	Two months off	Manuscript saves $24 a year, Pro $36

Where each comes out ahead on price: Novelcrafter's Scribe is the cheapest way to get organising tools without AI ($4 against our $7 Manuscript, billed monthly), and only Novelcrafter offers team plans. NovelCanon is cheaper if you want AI on a budget: AI works on the free plan, so writing with free models costs nothing within its one project and three chapters, while on Novelcrafter even free models need the $8 Hobbyist plan.

For what each tool does with your story, the Codex against a story bible extracted from your prose, see our full NovelCanon vs Novelcrafter comparison, or Sudowrite vs Novelcrafter if credits are on your mind. For the wider field, our Novelcrafter alternatives guide covers the options, and you can see our own plans on the pricing page.

Is Novelcrafter worth the price?

It depends on how you'll use AI. Pick a plan by what you'll use:

• Scribe if you want the Codex and planning tools and no AI.
• Hobbyist if you want AI at the lowest price and are happy to manage a key.
• Artisan if you want to chat with the AI about your book as well as generate scenes.
• Specialist if you need to bring co-writers or an editor into your own projects.

If you'd rather start free, want AI on every plan, or want a story bible extracted from your prose with a whole-book contradiction check (Pro), compare NovelCanon's plans before you commit.

Whichever you choose, use the 21-day trial to measure your real request volume, then set your provider's credit limit a little above it.