Credits & plans

Alcove runs on credits. Credits pay for the work that costs real compute — generating a chapter, scene art, or a character portrait. Reading is always free.

The unit that matters

The foundational unit is one pull: enough credits to generate one chapter. Smaller actions cost a fraction of a pull:

• Chapter — one full pull.
• Scene art — about half a pull.
• Character portrait — about a quarter of a pull.

Anchoring everything to "one chapter = one pull" keeps costs intuitive: you always know roughly how much story a balance buys.

A free chapter every day

In Alcove you read what you generate — your own story is the reading material. So the daily check-in grants enough credits for one full chapter per day, free. A free writer can always open something new tomorrow; paying just buys more — parallel stories, bigger drips, faster generation — never the basic loop.

We never paywall safety, basic canon memory, or basic data integrity.

Buying more credits

When you want to write ahead, you can buy credit bundles — larger bundles give more credits per dollar. The first time you buy a particular bundle, its credits are doubled. Credits are a fixed amount for a fixed price: there are no random pulls and no gambling.

Plans

• Free — daily check-in (your free chapter a day) and free reading.
• Patron — a low monthly subscription, the "monthly card": an instant chunk of credits when you subscribe, a bigger daily drip, and the cheapest per-credit rate. Designed for readers who write a little every day. (See the in-app billing screen for the current price.)

A higher feature tier (faster/better generation, teams) is planned for when those features ship.

Premium cartridge unlocks

Some cartridges are premium and unlocked with a one-time credit cost. Unlocking adds the cartridge to your library permanently. Like everything else, it's a fixed price — never a random pull.