NovelAIAI has 2 components:
- An AI story writer
- An AI Image Generator for anime images
While the story writer has a free trial, the Image Generator does not. You must pay for a subscription to use it. The cheapest subscription is $10/mo.
You can use NovelAI image generation for free by downloading the model and running it locally. This method is not sanctioned by the NovelAI company. If you talk about it in the official NovelAI Discord or Reddit you risk being banned.
TLDR:
- NovelAI's Image Generator does not have a free trial, however might have one in the near future.
- You can NovelAI Image Generation for free by downloading it to your computer. We talk about here (unofficial).
- If you like NovelAI's art style and can imagine yourself using it a lot, the Opus plan ($25/mo) is the best option.
- It gives you unlimited generations at normal resolution, and 10,000 Anlas (credits) to use for advanced features (higher resolution, Img2img, creating variations)
No free trial for image generation?
Unfortunately, at this time there is no free trial for NovelAI Image Generation. The NovelAI team has received many requests for this feature and report that it is planned for 2023.
You may use the AI story writer for free for a limited amount of uses. We talk more about the story writer here.
In addition, you should know there is also no option to purchase the Image Generation feature individually, if you do not want to use the Story Writer. They come as a bundle deal.
This is a turn-off for some users. Many new users are only interested in the Image Generation feature and not the writing features.
They feel as if committing to a monthly subscription that includes features they would never use is a waste of money.
The NovelAI team has heard these concerns, and will likely add a trial to image generation in 2023.
What is a "Gift Key" and how do you get one?
A Gift Key lets a user gift someone else a subscription for a month. You do not have to have an active subscription to buy someone else a gift key.
Streamers have been known to give out NovelAI Gift Keys, however this is difficult to plan for as they announce the giveaways during their streams.
You can purchase Gift Keys with credit card, Apple Pay and Google Pay.
To purchase a Gift Key:
- Click on the Gear icon
2. Click on the "Account" tab, scroll down and then click "Purchase New Gift Key".
Upon purchasing a Gift Key, you will obtain a code that can be redeemed by anyone you send it to. The plans for Gift Keys are the same plans you can purchase yourself.
Subscription Plans
NovelAI's credits are called Anlas, and are only used for image generation.
- Tablet: $10/month
- Unlimited text generation
- AI can remember 4096 characters (~500 words)
- 1000 Anlas for art generation (~200 images)
- Scroll: $15/month
- Unlimited text generation
- AI can remember 8192 characters (~1000 words)
- 1000 Anlas for art generations (~200 images)
- Opus: $25/month
- Uses a better AI storyteller model that the above plans
- Unlimited text generation
- AI can remember 8192 characters (~1000 words)
- 10,000 Anlas for art generations (~2000 images)
- Normal image generations do not cost Anlas, so this is effectively unlimited generations.
We recommend the Opus plan
The Opus plan makes the most sense if you're going to be using the image generation feature a lot.
This was clear to us immediately.
Just getting used to the software and trying out all the features will take around 500 Anlas, which is half of your limit on the lower plans!
On the other hand if you're on the Opus plan, normal-resolution generations cost 0 Anlas, so you can effectively generate as many images as your time allows. People in the Discord server have reportedly been doing nothing but generating in their free time.
For a direct comparison with Niji Journey:
- Niji journey's $10/month subscription comes with around 200 actions (increasing the resolution counts as an action).
- Niji journey's $30/month subscription comes with around 900 fast-mode actions, and infinite relax-mode actions (relax-mode puts you in a queue behind other people for your images to complete).
Since both Niji Journey and NovelAI have similar priced plans that give you infinite generations, the main differentiator is their art styles.
To give you an idea of how their art styles differ, check out our NovelAI prompting guide and our list of Niji Journey prompts.
Which art style do you prefer? Let us know in the comments!
