NovelAI Pricing: Every Tier and What Anlas Buy

19 September 2026

NovelAI pricing is three paid tiers — Tablet at $10 a month, Scroll at $15 and Opus at $25 — plus a free Paper trial, as stated in NovelAI’s own subscription documentation as of September 2026. Every paid tier includes unlimited text generation; what the extra money buys is a bigger memory for your story and a larger monthly pool of Anlas, the currency NovelAI spends on image generation.

That last sentence is the whole pricing question, and it is the part the comparison sites tend to bury. If you are there for anime image generation, the ladder is priced sensibly and Opus is the obvious tier. If you are there to be in a story and you will never generate an image, you are choosing between $10 and $25 a month for context size alone — and it is worth knowing what that money does before you spend it.

The short answer

• Paper is a free trial, not a free plan. 50 text generations, 30 image generations and 100 text-to-speech generations on a verified account.
• Tablet, $10/month — unlimited text and text-to-speech, 1,000 Anlas a month.
• Scroll, $15/month — the same, with a larger context size so the AI “remembers” more of your story.
• Opus, $25/month — the largest context (up to 28,672 tokens), 10,000 Anlas a month, image generations that cost no Anlas under certain conditions, and access to older experimental text models.
• Anlas only buy images. Text is unlimited on every paid tier, so if you do not generate images, the 10x Anlas jump from Tablet to Opus is worth nothing to you.

What each NovelAI tier costs

Taken from NovelAI’s subscription documentation as of September 2026. It is dated because prices and limits move.

NovelAI states the Opus context size directly — it “is the tier with the largest token context size, being able to remember up to 28,672 tokens”. For Scroll it describes the difference in words rather than a number: the tier “has access to a setting that makes a big difference for your storytelling: A larger Context Size. That means that the AI will ‘remember’ more things on a Scroll subscriber’s story compared to a Tablet tier.”

Subscriptions renew 30 days after payment, not on a calendar month, and cancelling leaves your tier privileges in place until the paid period ends.

What the free Paper trial actually includes

Paper is where most people start, and it is generous enough to answer the only question that matters: do you like writing this way?

“You get 30 free Image generations up to 1024x1024 resolution if you’re logged in with an e-mail verified account. You get 50 free Text generations if you’re logged in with an e-mail verified account.”

There are also 100 free text-to-speech generations, and — the detail worth knowing before you commit — settings and stories created during the free trial are carried over when you subscribe, so nothing is lost by trying it first.

Fifty text generations is a short evening. It is enough to learn the editor and the sliders; it is not enough to finish anything.

Anlas, in one paragraph

Anlas are NovelAI’s image-generation currency. Text generation and text-to-speech are unlimited on any paid tier; image generation is the only feature that requires Anlas. Your Subscription Anlas pool refills each month up to your tier’s amount, and only refills the portion you spent. You can buy extra Paid Anlas, which are only spent once the refillable pool is empty.

Two consequences most pricing pages skip:

• Cancel and the pool goes to zero. NovelAI states that from 31 days after the Diffusion V5 release, unused Subscription Anlas “reset to zero the moment your subscription ends”, and you “cannot purchase additional Anlas if you cancel your subscription”.
• Opus makes many images effectively free. Single images at normal size or below, 28 steps or fewer, with no base image, cost no Anlas on Opus — subject to a usage limit on models above V4.5.

Who should pay NovelAI, and which tier

Pay for Opus if you generate images. That is what the 10,000 Anlas and the Anlas-free generation rule are for, and at $25 it is the only tier where the image side is not rationed.

Pay for Scroll or Opus if you write long stories. Context size is the thing you feel: the AI forgetting a character introduced twenty pages ago is the single most common complaint about AI writing tools, and context is the axis NovelAI prices it on.

Tablet at $10 is the right tier for short, self-contained writing where you are steering closely anyway and re-stating what matters as you go.

And if none of those describe you, you may be paying for an authoring tool when you wanted a game. That is a different product category, and it is worth naming the difference rather than letting a price table decide it for you.

Where LLM RPG fits, and where it does not

NovelAI is an authoring tool: you write, it continues, and you are responsible for the story. LLM RPG is a game: you upload a novel — .txt or .epub — and a game master that has read it narrates while you play one character inside it. The AI builds a searchable lore atlas from the book first, so the world it narrates is that world, not a plausible imitation of it.

Stay with NovelAI if you want to write, or if you want images. LLM RPG does neither: it will not generate a picture, and it will not continue your prose in your voice. Those are NovelAI’s job and it does them.

Come to LLM RPG if what you actually wanted was to be in the book. The distinction is sharper than it sounds: a reader who has just finished a novel and wants another week in that world is not looking for a blank page.

How to try the other thing without cancelling anything

1. Keep your NovelAI subscription running. Nothing here requires a switch, and stories you have written stay where they are.
2. Start with the free credits. LLM RPG gives 50 credits to begin with — about 50 narrated turns, and the opening scene of a run is free. The full breakdown is on the pricing page.
3. Bring a book you know well. Lore extraction costs 1 credit per 50,000 characters, and you are shown exactly what a given book will cost before anything is spent. On the welcome credits alone you can extract up to 5 credits’ worth of any one book.
4. Judge it on whether the game master keeps the lore straight. That is the only claim the product makes that NovelAI does not, so it is the one worth testing.

If you want more after that, Pro Monthly is $9.00/month for 1,000 credits — about 1,000 turns at one credit each — and Premium Monthly is $29.00/month for 3,000 credits narrated by a better game-master model at three credits a turn. A one-off $5.00 pack buys 400 credits with no subscription. Failed turns and unfinished extractions are refunded automatically.

The honest summary

NovelAI’s pricing is not complicated and it is not unfair: $10, $15 or $25, unlimited text on all three, and the money buying memory and images. The mistake is paying the image tier’s price for a text habit, or paying an author’s tool when the thing you wanted was a chair at the table.

If you want to write, NovelAI. If you want to be played at — to have a world push back, in a book you already love — that is what LLM RPG is for, and you can find out on the free credits before deciding anything.

Elsewhere on this blog: a SillyTavern alternative that writes the lorebook for you, AI Dungeon vs NovelAI, and is AI Dungeon free.