# Pricing

> The studio runs on **your hardware**, with **your API key** for the Haiku formalization step. The render compute is free in the sense that you already pay for it — your laptop's electricity, your existing Anthropic credit. What follows is what we'd charge for the *software* and the *services*.

## Per-video cost (your side, no subscription)

| Component | Cost |
|---|---|
| Claude Haiku formalization (cached) | ~$0.0015 / video |
| Claude Haiku formalization (cold cache) | ~$0.015 / video |
| Render compute (your CPU) | Electricity — fractions of a cent |
| Asset library | Free; compounds across renders |
| The hundredth render of a character | Same as the first — zero |

**Reference:**
- 30-minute episode: ~5–10 Haiku calls = **~$0.50**
- 12-episode season: **~$5**
- 90-minute feature: ~30 Haiku calls = **~$0.08** (the arc-builder caches across all 30 scenes)
- vs. Sora-class: $540–$1,620 per 90-min feature in cloud GPU rental

## Subscription tiers

| | **Creator** | **Channel** | **Studio** |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly | $29 | $99 | $499 |
| Audience | Solo poster | Newsletter / show / podcast | Agency / production team |
| Characters | 5 YAMLs | 25 YAMLs | unlimited |
| Render budget | 30 min/mo @ 720p | 5 hrs/mo @ 1080p | unlimited @ 1080p |
| Templates | humanoid + mushroom_creature | + quadruped + abstract_figure | + custom template authoring |
| Voice stack | espeak + bridges | + tier-3 parametric TTS | + reference-audio fitting |
| Variants | clean + brainrot (free tier) | + brainrot_premium | + custom variants |
| Sources | local files only | + web_image + archive | + all sources, rights API |
| Output | watermark in corner | no watermark | + white-label, manifest export |
| Length cap | 90 sec | 15 min | feature-length (no cap) |
| Compose tab | form mode | form + canvas v0.2 | + per-project YAML editor |
| Box A render bridge | — | — | included |
| Support | docs only | email | priority + render queue |

## Brain-rot generator (Gumroad standalone)

Sold separately for users who only want the chaos register without the full studio subscription.

| | **Brain Rot Free** | **Brain Rot Pro** | **Brain Rot Studio** |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly | $0 | **$19** | **$79** |
| Intensity range | 0–0.75 | 0–1.5 (max chaos) | 0–1.5 + custom curves |
| Cast | 4 locked defaults | BYO YAML (5 chars) | unlimited |
| Premium polish (v3 ⊕ v4 hybrid) | off | on | on + per-line override |
| Clip length | 15 sec | 60 sec | 5 min |
| Output | 720p, watermark | 1080p, no watermark | 1080p + 9:16 + 1:1 batch |
| Tableaux library | 9 stock | 9 stock | + custom tableau authoring |
| API | — | — | yes |

## Style packs (Gumroad one-time purchase)

Each pack adds a styled register to any subscription tier.

| Pack | Includes | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Painterly Pack | watercolor + Van Gogh + claymation | $29 |
| Editorial Pack | vector_flat + paper_cutout + comic_halftone | $29 |
| Stylized Pack | cel_shaded + voxel_blocks | $19 |
| Photoreal Pack | photoreal_3d (Cycles + PBR + MakeHuman bridge) | $79 |
| Master Bundle | all 9 styles, perpetual updates | $149 |

## Why this works

The architecture is structurally cheap (no GPU rental, no per-frame model inference, asset library compounds), and the LLM cost is a rounding error. The subscription model isn't paying for compute — it's paying for the *software*, the *templates*, the *style backends*, the *source registry*, and the *Box A bridge* for users who don't have a Linux box.

A user on the Studio tier producing daily videos pays $499/mo and gets:
- ~$50 of Haiku usage (your API key, paid directly to Anthropic)
- Software, templates, premium styles, source modules, Box A bridge access
- ~365 deterministic character-persistent videos/year, owned forever

vs. the same volume on a neural-video subscription:
- ~$50,000–$150,000/year in cloud-GPU rental
- No characters owned; every render is a fresh hallucination
- Drift between renders requires re-prompting and re-shooting

The studio's pricing reflects the architecture: you're not renting compute, you're licensing a **procedural authorship surface for the multiplane primitive**.

## What you own forever vs. what you rent

| | Owned (yours) | Rented (subscription) |
|---|---|---|
| Character YAMLs | ✓ | |
| Procedural mint code | ✓ (open source) | |
| Multiplane primitives | ✓ (open source) | |
| All renders you produce | ✓ | |
| Source assets you've fetched | ✓ | |
| Premium style packs (after one-time purchase) | ✓ | |
| Box A render bridge access | | ✓ |
| Pro / Studio tier features | | ✓ |
| Premium template authoring | | Studio tier |

If you cancel the subscription, you keep everything in the "owned" column. The basic studio runs forever on your machine. You don't lose access to your work.

This is the inverse of the Adobe / Sora subscription model, which keeps your work behind a recurring rent. Architecturally it's the same shift the Free Software movement made for code: the user owns the tool and the assets; cloud features are voluntary.

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*Pricing draft 2026-04-27. Final tier numbers may shift before Gumroad launch.*