Plans and credits
The four Manuscript Studio plans, what a credit is, what each AI feature costs, and how monthly credits and top-up packs differ.
Manuscript Studio is a subscription. There is no free tier — an account without a plan has no credits and no book slots, and the app shows the pricing page until you choose one.
The plans
| Starter | Creator | Premium | Studio | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price / month | $5 | $12 | $25 | $100 |
| Books | 1 | 5 | 30 | 150 |
| Credits / month | 60 | 180 | 430 | 2,000 |
| Artwork storage | 2 GB | 10 GB | 40 GB | 150 GB |
| AI models | Quick draft | + Balanced | + Best prose | + Best prose |
| Writing assistant, Cover and Promotion studios | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Release desk: print PDF · EPUB · DOCX, checked per store | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| AI-narrated audiobook (38 voices) | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Credit top-up packs | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Every kind of book is on every plan: novels and non-fiction, and the page-designed kinds (coloring, picture, planner, recipe, photo, word search and sudoku books).
Nothing is unlimited. Every tier carries a finite book cap, including Studio. An earlier version of Premium advertised unlimited books; that was withdrawn because it was a promise with no ceiling on storage or render time behind it.
Change plan from Settings → Account, or from the pricing page. A change is a proration on your existing subscription — you are never charged twice.
What a credit is
A credit is the unit of AI work. Writing, chat and research are charged for the tokens they actually use: what the AI model cost to run that request, turned into credits at one fixed rate, and never less than one credit. A short answer from a light model costs a credit. A long chapter from the strongest model, or a model that thinks hard before it answers, costs more.
You see the price before you spend it. Every AI control shows its usual cost:
Ask first · ≈ 3 cr under the assistant's message box,
🔎 Deep research · ≈ 10 cr. If a control shows no number, the app could not
reach the backend to get a quote. It will not guess.
How a writing or chat request is charged
- Before it runs, the usual price is set aside from your balance. If you do not have that many credits, the request does not start, and nothing is spent.
- After it runs, the charge is changed to what the request really cost.
- If it cost less, the difference comes back to your balance.
- If it cost more, the rest is charged.
- Your balance never goes below zero. If you cannot cover the rest, you pay only what was set aside.
The message under each assistant reply shows what that turn was charged.
Pictures (cover art, page art) and the whole-book checks keep their own fixed prices, which are quoted before you start.
The models
You choose from a short lineup rather than a list of hundreds:
- Quick draft — fast and light on credits. On every plan.
- Balanced — good prose at a fair price. Creator and up.
- Best prose — the strongest writing, for the final pass. Premium and up.
Each one's usual price is shown beside it in the model picker. Quick draft usually costs about a credit to rewrite a passage, and the stronger two cost more. You are charged for the tokens actually used, as described above. The model behind a name can be moved to a newer one as better models appear; the name, and what it is for, stay the same.
What things cost
These are the usual prices. A price can change, so the number on the button is always the current one. Pictures are charged exactly the number on the button. Writing, chat and research are charged for the tokens they use, starting from that number.
| Action | Usual cost |
|---|---|
| Generate an outline | 1 call, for the tokens it uses |
| Consistency check across chapters | 1 call, for the tokens it uses |
| A writing-assistant turn | About 1 credit, plus any writing it does for you. Charged for the tokens used |
| Deep research | About 10 credits, charged for the tokens used |
| Cover art | By resolution — Proof, Standard or Print — quoted before you start |
| Auto-draft the whole book | Per chapter, for the tokens it uses, resumable |
| Audiobook narration, natural voices | 15 credits for a full-length book (about 85,000 words), more for longer |
| Audiobook narration, Realism lite | 1 credit per 2,000 characters — about 250 for a 90,000-word novel |
| Audiobook narration, Studio realism | 1 credit per 1,111 characters — about 450 for a 90,000-word novel |
| Page art for a layout book | Per page, by image tier — quoted before you start |
Re-narrating a corrected passage charges only for that passage, at the same per-character rate.
Monthly credits vs top-up packs
Two different things, and the difference matters.
- Monthly credits are your plan's allotment. They reset each billing cycle — they do not roll over.
- Pack credits are a one-time top-up (100 or 300 credits). They never expire.
Spending drains the monthly bucket first, packs second. That ordering is deliberate: it means a pack is a genuine reserve for the month a job overruns, rather than something that quietly evaporates at renewal. Buy packs from Settings → Account (subscribers only).
When a job fails
You are refunded. Credits are reserved before the AI provider is called and returned in full if the call fails. This applies to enhancement, research, narration and page art alike.
Cancelling is different from failing, and narration is the one place they differ meaningfully: cancelling a narration refunds only the passages that had not been rendered yet, because the rendered ones stay cached and are free to reuse.
What to watch for
- Downgrading caps your credits, it does not refill them. Moving from Premium to Starter mid-cycle leaves you with at most the new plan's allotment, not a fresh 60.
- Archiving a book does not free a book slot. The cap counts every book you have made, archived or not. This is deliberate — otherwise the cap means nothing.
- If you go over a cap after a downgrade, nothing is deleted. The newest books stay editable and the rest become read-only until you upgrade again.
- Exports are not metered. Rendering a PDF, EPUB, DOCX, cover or release bundle costs no credits on any plan.