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By the toolist.ai editors. Read from Novelcrafter's pricing page, not hands-on tested by toolist.ai. Updated October 30, 2026.
Novelcrafter pricing
Novelcrafter's cheapest paid plan is Scribe at $4 a month billed monthly, or $3.33 a month billed yearly.
Free plan: None. A 21-day free trial unlocks every feature of the top plan, Specialist, with no credit card; afterwards your novels stay readable and exportable but cannot be edited. A free account can view novels others share with you. The cheapest paid plan, Scribe ($4), has no AI; AI features start on Hobbyist ($8), and no plan includes any AI usage: AI always runs on your own AI provider account or a local model, so it costs whatever that provider charges (some OpenRouter models and local models cost nothing).
| Plan | Billed monthly | Billed yearly, per month | Includes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scribe | $4 | $3.33 | No AI. Unlimited books, the Codex, series (universes marked planned) and basic review tools; you can join other people's novels, series and teams as a viewer or editor; Discord and email support; $40 a year billed yearly |
| Hobbyist | $8 | $6.67 | Everything in Scribe plus AI with your own key (no AI usage included; you pay your AI provider or run a local model): scene beats, text replacement, scene summarization, character extraction and custom prompts; live chat support; no Chat; $80 a year billed yearly |
| Artisan | $14 | $11.67 | Everything in Hobbyist plus Chat (Workshop Chat) and advanced review tools (marked planned); the page's 'Most popular' plan; $140 a year billed yearly |
| Specialist | $20 | $16.67 | Everything in Artisan plus inviting other users to your novels and series, creating and managing teams, and priority support; the plan the 21-day free trial unlocks; $200 a year billed yearly |
| Cost per finished minute | Not measured by us, and the vendor does not publish an allowance we can divide by. |
|---|
Prices last checked: 2026-10-30 on Novelcrafter's pricing page.
Price history
No price change since we first recorded these prices on October 20, 2026. We re-check them every week and list each change here.
To price your own month on Novelcrafter and the tools like it, use the AI cost calculator.
Before you pay
- No plan includes AI usage. Every request is paid to the provider you connect, at its own rates, or runs on a local model; Novelcrafter's help center says costs climb with expensive models, many words of prose or many Codex entries in the context, long chats and long outputs. Its own example, at November 2024 prices, puts one scene-beat generation (about 4,200 tokens in, 400 words out) at about 2 cents on Claude 3.5 Sonnet and 10 cents on Claude Opus. ChatGPT Plus, Claude Pro, Google AI Pro and Poe subscriptions cannot be used.
- Features are split by plan: Scribe ($4) has no AI at all, Hobbyist ($8) has scene beats, text replacement, summaries and character detection but no Chat, and Chat starts on Artisan ($14); on Scribe and Hobbyist past chats stay readable but cannot be continued. Inviting others to your novels or series and creating teams needs Specialist ($20). The 21-day trial unlocks Specialist, so any cheaper plan has fewer features than the trial.
- Setup takes effort: Tom's Guide's Amanda Caswell disliked the setup, XDA's Saeed Wazir calls it not the most user-friendly app, and no AI feature works until you connect an account with an AI provider or set up a local model. AI connections are kept only in your browser, so you set them up again on each new device or browser, and private browsing or clearing the cache removes them.
- Your manuscript text goes to whichever AI provider you connect, under that provider's terms. OpenRouter's free models often require you to allow training or logging in OpenRouter's privacy settings, and are limited to 50 requests a day unless you have bought at least $10 of credits (as Novelcrafter's help center quotes OpenRouter). Novelcrafter's NSFW guide says many models refuse or soften explicit, violent or self-harm scenes and providers change their filters regularly, and it warns that trying to get around a provider's restrictions can get your account there suspended or banned.
- It works only online, with no offline mode or date for one, and runs in the browser, which Chrome, Edge or Safari can install as a web app; the iPhone app called Novel Crafter on the US App Store comes from another developer, Love Power Up, LLC. There is no formatting for publication (export to Word or Markdown and format elsewhere), and the editor does not support right-to-left languages such as Arabic, Hebrew and Urdu.
- No free plan and no deals: after the trial or a cancellation your work stays readable and exportable, with no time limit, but cannot be edited. There are no sales, no student, educator, non-profit or purchasing-power discounts, no team pricing (each user pays for their own account) and no lifetime option; yearly billing gives two months free (about 17% less). Refunds are at Novelcrafter's discretion within a short period (its terms, last updated September 29, 2023, give 14 days as an example), cancelling gives no refund for the rest of the period, and a pause starts only when the current billing period ends.
- Outside the US the pricing page converts prices into your local currency with local tax included (to a reader in Canada on October 20, 2026, Scribe showed as about CA$5.90 a month with 5% tax included, an amount that moves with the exchange rate); support can send a payment link in another currency. Payments run through Paddle, which appears on card statements as NOVELCRFTR and blocks purchases from some sanctioned countries and regions. Users must be 18 or older.
- Reviews are thin: Trustpilot lists only two, on an unclaimed profile that has not invited reviews; one (March 2026) praises the Codex and the organization despite a steep learning curve for the advanced features, and one (November 2025) says the AI wrote only a few lines per chapter and ignored the outline.
See the full Novelcrafter review and how we research.
Sources
- Novelcrafter pricing (US$ for a US visitor; plans, feature table and FAQ) (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter home page (AI platforms, 'plans starting from 4 USD/m') (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter feature overview (features by plan) (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter: The Codex (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter help: Need Help? (no AI credits in any subscription) (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter help: Do you offer a free trial? (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter help: In which currencies can I pay? (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter help: Can I upgrade/downgrade my plan? (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter help: How do I manage my subscription? (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter help: Can I pause my subscription? (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter help: Why is there another company on my billing when I check my bank account? (Paddle, NOVELCRFTR) (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter help: E-403 Error (countries Paddle blocks) (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter help: What happens to my novels if I pause or cancel my subscription? (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter help: Is there a lifetime payment option? (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter help: How much does the AI cost? (example costs, November 2024) (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter help: Why are my messages costing so much? (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter help: What is BYOK? (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter help: Does Novelcrafter provide its own AI? (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter help: How can I use AI for free? (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter help: I have a subscription to ChatGPT Plus / Claude Pro / Google AI Pro / Poe.com (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter help: I can't access OpenRouter's free models (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter help: Why aren't my AI Vendors showing when I use a different device? (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter help: Choosing an AI Vendor (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter help: Connecting to AI for the first time (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter help: OpenRouter (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter help: Why can't I access chat? (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter help: Using Chat (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter help: Extract (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter help: Generating Prose (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter help: What is the difference between scene beat and continue writing? (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter help: Text Replacement Prompts (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter help: Plan Views (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter help: Is there a limit to the number of codex entries/chats/snippets I can have? (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter help: If I'm on the Specialist plan, does the person I invite have to also have a Novelcrafter account? (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter help: Collaboration and Coauthoring (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter help: Can I use Novelcrafter in offline mode? (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter help: How can I use Novelcrafter as a web app? (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter help: What languages can I write in? (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter help: Can I format my novel for publication in Novelcrafter? (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter help: Export Novel (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter help: Import Word (.docx) (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter help: Import Apple Pages (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter help: Export to Scrivener (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter help: Writing NSFW Content with AI (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter blog: How We Recommend AI Models For Writers (October 1, 2026) (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter Privacy Policy (last updated August 31, 2026) (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter Terms and Conditions (last updated September 29, 2023) (checked 2026-10-20)
- Novelcrafter Affiliate Program (checked 2026-10-20)
- App Store (US): Novel Crafter by Love Power Up, LLC (not Novelcrafter) (checked 2026-10-20)
- Tom's Guide: I tried writing a book with ChatGPT — here's where it completely broke down (tests Sudowrite and Novelcrafter) (checked 2026-10-20)
- XDA Developers: I tried this novel creation app, and it blew my mind (checked 2026-10-20)
- Trustpilot: App Novelcrafter (app.novelcrafter.com) (checked 2026-10-20)