What Is NovelAI and What You Get Once the Free Trial Ends

What’s Changed: NovelAI is Anlatan’s browser-based AI story writer and anime image generator, sold as Tablet ($10), Scroll ($15) and Opus ($25) plans after a one-time trial of 50 text and 30 image generations. Since August 21, 2026, its new V5 image model runs on a refilling usage cap for Opus subscribers, and unused monthly image credits now vanish when you cancel.

What is NovelAI? It is a paid writing and art studio from a company called Anlatan, where an AI continues your story and draws anime-style images, and the app called “NovelAI” on the App Store is not it.

That app comes from another seller and bills $4.99 a week, while the real NovelAI runs in a web browser, as it has since June 2021.

The service also changed a lot between August and October 2026. A new image model arrived on August 21, Opus lost truly unlimited images on that model, unused credits started vanishing on cancellation, and two old text models went open source.

NovelAI earns its $10 for people who write long stories and care about privacy, and I only think the $25 plan pays off if you also make a lot of images.

This page covers what each plan buys, what changed this fall, why cards fail at checkout, and how to install the real thing.

What Is NovelAI?

NovelAI is a subscription AI writing studio and anime image generator from Anlatan that runs in your browser, with no native phone app and no character chat bots.

On the writing side, you type the opening of a story and the AI continues it, while a Lorebook feeds it facts about your characters and world. The flagship model is Xialong, a 355-billion-parameter tune of ZhipuAI’s GLM-4.6 released on March 31, 2026, listed next to GLM-4.6, Llama 3 Erato and Kayra on NovelAI’s model page.

On the art side, NovelAI Diffusion V5 arrived on August 21 in two versions. Curated is the one NovelAI recommends if you want to be sure nothing sensitive appears by accident, while Full draws on a broader, less curated image set.

If what you want is a character who chats back and sends pictures, NovelAI is the wrong shape of product. A companion app like Candy AI is built for that, and Anlatan cancelled its own chatbot project, AetherRoom, on May 8, 2026.

What I like most is that NovelAI treats you as the author. The AI suggests the next paragraph, and you keep it, edit it or ask for another one.

NovelAI’s first image generator launched on October 3, 2022. A working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, hosted by Boston University, studied that launch. It found a significant decline in uploads on the art site Pixiv by illustrators who did not adopt AI.

What Changed on NovelAI Between August and October 2026?

NovelAI made six changes in seven weeks, from the V5 image model and its Opus usage cap to a stricter rule for leftover credits and a cheaper Medium effort mode.

What is Anlas: NovelAI’s image credit. Images beyond your plan’s free allowance cost Anlas, and the price rises with image size and step count.

The change that bothers me most is the credit reset, because it hits the people most likely to cancel without reading the fine print. The other five mostly give you more for the same money.

How Does the Opus Usage Limit on NovelAI V5 Work?

The Opus limit works like a battery: each free V5 image drains it, and it refills about 11% a day in your first 30 days and about 14% a day after that.

NovelAI’s FAQ puts a full bar at about 1,730 images. At the default 23 steps and normal resolution, that adds up to about 7,000 images a month.

An empty bar takes 9 days to refill on a new subscription and 7 days on a continuing one, and every model older than V5 stays unlimited for Opus.

NovelAI says V5 costs more than twice as much to run as V4.5, and that its choice was a cap or roughly doubling the $25 price.

I’ll give Anlatan that one: about 7,000 images a month is a lot, and a $50 Opus would have hurt more people.

What Is the Medium Effort Toggle on NovelAI?

Medium effort is a cheaper V5 Full mode, added on October 8, 2026, that runs at 14 steps and uses about 42% less of your allowance or Anlas than High effort at default settings.

The Effort Toggle announcement says both levels came out roughly equal in NovelAI’s internal blind tests. The trade is control: the sampler is locked to Euler Ancestral, the Undesired Content box (NovelAI’s negative prompt field) and its presets are gone, and Prompt Guidance Rescale is not supported.

That means negative prompts move into the main prompt as negative emphasis. Here is the swap the announcement suggests, applied to a simple prompt:

Before: prompt 1girl, witch, night forest, with hat typed into the Undesired Content box (not allowed on Medium)

After: prompt 1girl, witch, night forest, -3::hat::, with the Undesired Content box left empty

Medium makes sense to me for drafts and quick tests, with High kept for the final image you plan to share.

What Happens to NovelAI Anlas When You Cancel?

Since September 22, 2026, unused subscription Anlas reset to zero the moment your NovelAI subscription ends, while Anlas you bought separately never expire.

Per the Anlas policy notice, cancelling early resets them on the date your plan would have ended.

On the day the rule started, NovelAI converted everyone’s existing subscription Anlas into paid Anlas, so nobody lost a balance that day.

My advice is to spend what is left before your last paid day. The subscription docs say you cannot buy more Anlas after you cancel, and only spent subscription Anlas get refilled at renewal.

Are Krake and Clio Gone From NovelAI?

Not yet: NovelAI released Krake and Clio as open-source models on September 24, 2026, and says they still work for now but will eventually be removed from the site.

Krake is a tune of EleutherAI’s GPT-NeoX-20B that only Opus subscribers could use, and Clio is a 3-billion-parameter model NovelAI trained from scratch.

Per the Goodbye Krake & Clio post, Krake now ships under GPL-3.0 and Clio under GPL-2.0 for anyone to download.

Is NovelAI Free?

No. NovelAI has a one-time free trial called Paper, with 50 text generations, 30 images up to 1024×1024 and 100 text-to-speech plays, and it does not refill each month.

You need an account with a verified email address, and the subscription docs say everything you write during the trial carries over if you subscribe.

The trial even includes GLM-4.6, which NovelAI opened to Free Trial users in October 2025.

NovelAI’s FAQ says trial actions are given once with no refreshes, though counts may reset after big releases. It also says there are currently no plans for a free version of NovelAI.

Fifty generations go fast, so I count Paper as a demo rather than a free tier. If the trial leaves you unconvinced, the NovelAI alternatives list covers other story tools.

How Much Does NovelAI Cost?

NovelAI costs $10 a month for Tablet, $15 for Scroll and $25 for Opus, renewing every 30 days, and Anlatan’s terms say there are no refunds unless it grants one.

The plans differ in story memory, writing models and image credits. These figures come from NovelAI’s subscription docs and its GLM-4.6 notice:

If you run out of image credits, NovelAI sells Anlas in packs of 2,000 for $4.79, 5,000 for $8.19 and 10,000 for $13.99. Arcanum RPGs’ pricing breakdown works out that Tablet’s 1,000 monthly Anlas cover about 38 images at default settings.

Scroll is the plan I have the least use for. It buys 4,096 more tokens of memory than Tablet for $5 more and changes nothing else.

Which NovelAI Plan Should You Pick?

Pick Tablet if you mainly write, Opus if you write novels or make images most days, and Scroll only if extra story memory is the one thing you are missing.

Tablet is the plan I point most writers to, because unlimited text is the core of the product. Match the plan to what you do most:

Is NovelAI Safe and Private?

NovelAI is one of the more private AI tools: your stories are encrypted in your browser so Anlatan cannot read them, and its privacy policy says prompts are not stored. The two real risks are losing your password and installing a fake app.

NovelAI’s privacy policy, effective September 10, 2026, says stories, lorebooks and scripts are encrypted with a key made from your password that never leaves your device.

Your image history stays on your device too, and uploaded images sit in an encrypted cache for up to one hour.

If you lose your password, the same policy says nobody can recover your stories, not even NovelAI. Images you publish to NovelAI’s Explore page also carry their prompts with them.

The terms require users to be 18 or older. For a story you plan to keep, NovelAI is the tool I trust more than any companion app, because the saved draft is encrypted with a key only you hold.

Does NovelAI Have an App?

No. NovelAI runs in the browser and installs as a web app from novelai.net, and the App Store app named “NovelAI” comes from a different seller.

The App Store listing titled “NovelAI | AI Story Generator” is sold by SADIQUL AMIN, rated 4+, and charges $4.99 a week, $9.99 a month or $49.99 a year. On Google Play, the top result for “novelai” is Novel AI Studio from a developer called Dino1208, listed at 50K+ downloads.

This worries me more than any setting inside NovelAI, because the fake app’s weekly price looks normal next to the real monthly one. To put the real NovelAI on your phone:

1. Open novelai.net in your phone’s browser and sign in.
2. In Chrome, tap “Add to Home screen”, and in Firefox, tap “Install”, the two routes NovelAI’s FAQ names.
3. On an iPhone in Safari, tap Share and then Add to Home Screen.
4. Open NovelAI from the new icon, which runs NovelAI full screen without the browser bar.

Why Does NovelAI Keep Declining My Card?

NovelAI bills cards through Chargebee and its own card gateway, and some cards pass the 3D Secure check and are still declined at its checkout.

One r/NovelAi thread lists debit, credit, Wise virtual and Klarna virtual cards that all failed this way. NovelAI’s FAQ says only that it accepts any payment method Chargebee supports and plans to add more.

My rule with checkout errors like this is to change one thing per attempt, so you learn what is failing. Work through these in order:

1. If you subscribed before the switch, open Manage Account and choose “Switch to New Payment Processor”, the migration step NovelAI’s FAQ describes.
2. Try a different physical credit card before reaching for a virtual or prepaid one.
3. Do not open a second account to retry, because NovelAI limits each identity to one active subscription and says it cannot help with payment problems across multiple accounts.
4. Email support@novelai.net with the exact error, the contact address in NovelAI’s terms.

Is NovelAI Good for Roleplay and Character Chat?

NovelAI is good for co-written roleplay stories and text adventures, but it is not a character chat app, and Anlatan has cancelled the chatbot it was building.

NovelAI has a Text Adventure mode, and with Xialong the model docs say your inputs are sent as instructions. That suits solo campaigns, and the closest rival for that style is covered in the AI Dungeon review.

AetherRoom was meant to be NovelAI’s answer to chat apps, and Anlatan cancelled it in May 2026 after its scope slowed work on NovelAI. Its datasets now feed NovelAI’s text models, so the chat project survives only inside the story writer.

If you want a character who texts back, Nectar AI suits anime-style characters you design yourself, and Candy AI puts chat and pictures in one app, though its free tier stops at five messages. That split feels right to me: NovelAI fails at chat the way chat apps fail at a 100,000-word draft.

For a writing-first tool that sits closer to NovelAI, the DreamGen review covers another story and roleplay platform.

Quick Takeaways

• NovelAI is Anlatan’s browser-based story writer and anime image generator, with Tablet at $10, Scroll at $15 and Opus at $25 a month.

• The free trial is 50 text and 30 image generations, given once, so treat it as a demo.

• Since August 21, 2026, free V5 images on Opus draw from a refilling cap of about 7,000 a month.

• Spend leftover subscription Anlas before you cancel, because they reset to zero when the plan ends.

• The “NovelAI” app on the App Store is not from Anlatan, so install the real one from novelai.net in your browser.