NovelAI costs $10 per month on Tablet, $15 per month on Scroll, and $25 per month on Opus. There is a free Paper trial, there is no annual discount, and every paid tier includes unlimited text generation — what you actually pay more for is memory and images.
Every figure on this page was checked against NovelAI’s official subscription documentation and novelai.net as of 12 September 2026. Prices move; the links are there so you can confirm before you buy.
In this breakdown you will get:
- All three paid tiers plus the free trial, with what each one actually unlocks
- How Anlas credits work, including the refill rule that catches people out
- An honest read on where NovelAI beats Chapter, and where the $10 sticker price misleads
Here are the tiers.
How Much Does NovelAI Cost per Month?
NovelAI costs $0 on the free Paper trial, $10 per month on Tablet, $15 per month on Scroll, and $25 per month on Opus. All three paid tiers include unlimited text and text-to-speech generation. There is no annual billing option and no yearly discount.
| Tier | Monthly | Anlas per month | What the money buys |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paper (trial) | $0 | None | 50 text generations, 30 image generations up to 1024x1024, 100 text-to-speech generations |
| Tablet | $10 | 1,000 | Unlimited text and TTS, image generation, smallest context window |
| Scroll | $15 | 1,000 | Everything in Tablet plus a larger context window |
| Opus | $25 | 10,000 | 28,672-token context, exclusive and legacy models, Anlas-free standard images |
The pricing ladder is unusual. Most writing tools charge you for more words. NovelAI gives you unlimited words on the $10 plan and charges you for how much of your story the model can remember and how many pictures you can make.
That matters for how you choose. If you are writing short pieces or a serial with tight scenes, Tablet is genuinely enough. If you are writing a 90,000-word novel and expect the model to hold continuity, you are on Opus whether you like it or not.
What Is the Difference Between Tablet, Scroll, and Opus?
The difference between Tablet, Scroll, and Opus is context size, Anlas allowance, and model access — not text volume. All three give you unlimited generations.
- Tablet ($10) — the smallest context window. The model forgets earlier scenes soonest, so you lean harder on Memory, Author’s Note and Lorebook to compensate.
- Scroll ($15) — the same 1,000 Anlas as Tablet, but a larger context window. You pay $5 for memory alone. No extra images.
- Opus ($25) — a documented 28,672-token context, 10,000 Anlas, exclusive access to the Xialong model plus the legacy Krake and Llama 3 Erato models, and standard image generations that cost no Anlas at all under specific conditions.
NovelAI publishes the 28,672-token figure for Opus in its docs but does not publish a single fixed number for Tablet and Scroll — the windows have shifted across model generations. Treat Tablet and Scroll as meaningfully smaller and verify in-app for the model you are running.
The awkward part of the ladder is the middle. Scroll costs 50% more than Tablet and gives you nothing but context. If context is what you need, the honest move is usually to skip Scroll and go straight to Opus, where the extra $10 also buys you 9,000 more Anlas and the better models.
How Do Anlas Credits Work?
Anlas are NovelAI’s image generation currency. Text generation never costs Anlas. You spend them on image generations that exceed the free parameters — larger resolutions, higher step counts, multiple images at once, or generations that use a base image.
Two mechanics are worth knowing before you subscribe:
- The refill is not a reset. NovelAI refills spent Subscription Anlas back up to your tier’s allowance each month. It does not top you up to a fresh 1,000 on top of what you did not use. There is no stockpiling.
- Paid Anlas are separate. You can buy Anlas on demand as a one-off. Purchased Anlas are only spent once your Subscription Anlas are exhausted, and they do not count toward the monthly refill.
Opus also gets Anlas-free standard image generation — one image at a time, normal size, 28 steps or fewer, no base image, subject to usage limits on the newest models. In practice that is the single biggest reason illustrators and cover-makers jump straight to the top tier. See the image generation docs for the current parameter thresholds.
Is There a Free Version of NovelAI?
There is a free Paper trial, not a free plan. A verified account gets 50 text generations, 30 image generations up to 1024x1024, and 100 text-to-speech generations — once, not monthly. Your stories and progress carry over if you subscribe later.
Fifty text generations is enough to judge the prose quality and the interface. It is not enough to write anything. Budget on the assumption that you will be paying within an hour of signing up.
What Does NovelAI Actually Cost Over a Year?
NovelAI costs $120 a year on Tablet, $180 on Scroll, and $300 on Opus, with no annual discount to soften it. Because there is no per-book price, the real number depends entirely on how long your project takes.
| Tier | 6 months | 12 months | 24 months |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tablet | $60 | $120 | $240 |
| Scroll | $90 | $180 | $360 |
| Opus | $150 | $300 | $600 |
That is the cost structure worth thinking about, and it is why we wrote a full breakdown of AI book writing costs. Subscription tools bill by elapsed time, not by finished manuscripts. A novel that stalls for eight months still bills you for eight months.
Where NovelAI Genuinely Beats Chapter
This is our blog, so treat the rest of this page accordingly — but NovelAI does several things we do not, and pretending otherwise would waste your time.
- Client-side encryption. NovelAI encrypts your stories in your browser before storage, which means the platform itself cannot read them. Chapter does not offer that. If you are writing something you would not want a company employee to be able to open, that is a real and rare advantage.
- No text content moderation. NovelAI serves its own models. Dark fiction, explicit scenes, morally ugly characters — nothing gets refused mid-scene. Chapter’s pipeline is built on moderated models, and if your book lives in that territory, you will hit walls we cannot remove for you.
- Token-level control. Repetition penalty, top-k and top-p sampling, phrase bias, banned tokens, custom AI modules trained on your own prose. Chapter deliberately hides all of this to keep the workflow simple. If you want to tune the sampler, we are the wrong tool and NovelAI is a genuinely deep one. The text generation docs show how far that goes.
- Lorebook. Keyword-triggered memory injection is smarter than it sounds. For a sprawling serial with forty named factions, a well-configured Lorebook beats an outline, because it feeds the model only the lore relevant to the current scene.
- Bundled image generation. Character art and cover concepts inside the same $10. Chapter does not generate images at all.
- API and third-party front-ends. An Opus subscription drives tools like SillyTavern. Chapter is a closed pipeline.
If two or more of those bullets describe you, buy NovelAI. We would rather tell you that than sell you the wrong thing.
Our Product — Chapter
Chapter is a book production pipeline. You give it a topic or premise; it returns a structured, finished, publish-ready manuscript.
Where Chapter wins: NovelAI is a superb prose co-writer and a poor book finisher. It has no outline engine, no chapter-level structure enforcement, and no export path — no EPUB, no print-ready PDF, no KDP formatting. You buy that separately. And it bills monthly forever: twelve months on Tablet is $120, already more than Chapter’s $97 one-time price, and twelve months on Opus is $300.
Best for: authors who want a finished manuscript rather than a better drafting sandbox. Pricing: $97 one-time (nonfiction) | varies (fiction) Why we built it: 2,147+ authors and 5,000+ books later, the thing that kills book projects is not prose quality — it is structure and the absence of a finish line.
The honest recommendation: if you are a fiction writer who wants deep control, privacy and no content filter, NovelAI at $25 is money well spent. If you want a book to exist, Chapter is the better buy. Plenty of writers run both, and $97 plus $120 in year one is a perfectly sensible stack.
Is NovelAI Worth the $25 Opus Tier?
NovelAI Opus is worth $25 per month if you need the 28,672-token context or the Anlas-free image generation. Those two things are the tier’s entire argument. If you write short-form, or you never generate images, Tablet at $10 delivers the same unlimited text for $180 less a year.
Our full assessment of the platform’s strengths and weak spots is in the NovelAI review.
FAQ
Does NovelAI have a free plan?
NovelAI does not have a free plan — it has a one-time Paper trial. You get 50 text generations, 30 image generations up to 1024x1024, and 100 text-to-speech generations on a verified account. The allowance does not refresh monthly, so plan on subscribing.
Is NovelAI cheaper than Sudowrite?
NovelAI is cheaper at entry, starting at $10 per month against Sudowrite’s credit-based plans, and it gives you unlimited text generation where Sudowrite meters words. Sudowrite is the stronger structural tool. Our Sudowrite vs NovelAI comparison breaks down which suits which writer.
Can you pay for NovelAI annually?
You cannot pay for NovelAI annually. All three tiers — Tablet, Scroll and Opus — are monthly only, with no yearly discount as of September 2026. That is unusual among AI writing subscriptions and it makes the long-project math worse than it first appears.
Do Anlas credits roll over?
Anlas credits do not roll over. NovelAI refills the Anlas you spent, up to your tier’s allowance, rather than adding a fresh allocation each month. Separately purchased Paid Anlas persist and are spent only after your Subscription Anlas run out.
What happens to my stories if I cancel NovelAI?
Your stored stories remain in your account after you cancel, but your Subscription Anlas can be lost and you drop back to trial-level access. Export anything you care about before you cancel rather than after.
Related Reading
- NovelAI review — the honest assessment of what it does well and badly
- NovelAI alternatives — what else is worth testing at this price
- Sudowrite vs NovelAI — the closest head-to-head
- Best AI novel writing tools — the wider fiction landscape
- Chapter.pub pricing explained — the $97 one-time model, line by line
- Chapter review — an honest assessment of our own tool
- AI book writing costs — what a finished book really costs across tools
- How to write a novel — the process the tooling is meant to serve
Pricing verified 12 September 2026 against NovelAI’s official subscription documentation and novelai.net. Context-window figures for Tablet and Scroll are not published as fixed numbers; confirm in-app for your model.
