Yes, NovelAI has a free trial: an account with a verified email gets 50 free text generations, 30 free images up to 1024×1024 and 100 text-to-speech generations, once. It doesn't refill. At NovelAI's own maximum of 600 characters per generation, 50 generations come to at most about 5,000 words, and then the cheapest plan is $10 a month.
Every figure here is from NovelAI's own subscription page and FAQ, read 29 October 2026; the review sites that disagree are further down.
What the NovelAI free trial gives you
| What | The trial (NovelAI calls it Paper) | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Text | "50 free Text generations", with an email-verified account | Subscription docs |
| Images | "30 free Image generations up to 1024x1024 resolution" | Same page |
| Voice | "100 free Text to Speech generations" | Same page |
| Refills | None: trial actions are given once and aren't refreshed, though the count "may reset during major releases" | FAQ |
| A free version later? | "There are currently no plans for a free version of NovelAI at this time." | FAQ |
| What carries over | Settings and stories made during the trial carry over when you subscribe | Subscription docs |
Checked 29 October 2026: the subscription page and FAQ above, and NovelAI's models page and slider settings. NovelAI's pages don't say which model trial users write with or how much context the trial gets. RoboRhythms (9 October 2026) says the trial includes GLM-4.6; we couldn't confirm that on NovelAI's own pages.
How much story 50 generations is
A NovelAI generation is one click of Send: the AI continues your text by one chunk. How big that chunk can be is a setting. NovelAI's slider docs give Output Length "a minimum of 4 and a maximum of 600 characters depending on your Subscription Tier". A community guide to the settings adds that the slider counts tokens and shows them "multiplied by four to show the average amount of characters" (NovelAI Unofficial Knowledgebase).
So the arithmetic, at best:
| Characters | Words (at about six characters a word, with the space) | |
|---|---|---|
| One generation at the 600-character maximum | 600 | about 100 |
| The whole trial, 50 generations | 30,000 | about 5,000 |
That's the ceiling, not the usual. NovelAI says the maximum depends on your tier and doesn't publish the trial's, and every retry of a line you didn't like is a generation too. In practice the trial is a scene or two: enough to feel how the model continues your prose, not enough to see what happens to a story at chapter 10.
Why other pages give different numbers
Search "NovelAI free trial" and you'll read three versions of the same trial:
| Page | What it says | Checked |
|---|---|---|
| NovelAI's own docs | 50 text generations, 30 images, 100 TTS, once | 29 Oct 2026 |
| Tools for Humans | "50 text generations and 100 text actions per month" | Last reviewed 24 Mar 2026 |
| Top 50 AI Tools | "rough order of ~100 generations on a reduced setup", images "often locked or tiny on trial" | Updated 18 Oct 2026 |
"Per month" is the one to watch: NovelAI's FAQ says the trial isn't refreshed.
What NovelAI costs after the trial
| Tier | Price | Text | Context | Images |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tablet | $10 a month | Unlimited text and TTS generations | 8,192 tokens (RoboRhythms) | 1,000 Anlas a month |
| Scroll | $15 a month | Same | "A larger Context Size"; 12,288 tokens per RoboRhythms | 1,000 Anlas a month |
| Opus | $25 a month | Same, plus Xialong and experimental models | Up to 28,672 tokens | 10,000 Anlas, and unlimited small images |
Prices and the Opus figure are from the subscription docs, checked 29 October 2026; NovelAI's page doesn't give the Tablet and Scroll context in tokens, so those two figures are RoboRhythms'. NovelAI's models page lists GLM-4.6 (an update of 1 October 2025) and Xialong with 28,672 tokens of context plus an 8,192-token rollover window. One recent change, from the same subscription page: starting 31 days after the NovelAI Diffusion V5 release, unused subscription Anlas reset to zero when your subscription ends.
What the NovelAI trial does well, and where it falls short
NovelAI's trial is a fair test of one thing: how its models continue your prose, line by line. It needs only an account with a verified email, and the stories you write in it are kept if you subscribe. NovelAI's FAQ says stories "are encrypted in your browser", so nobody but you can read them on its servers.
Where it falls short:
- It's too short to test memory. Five thousand words, at best, never reach the point where a long story breaks: the AI's window filling up and chapter 1 falling out of it. At 28,672 tokens on Opus, that point is a few chapters in. Everything older reaches the AI through the Memory box, the Author's Note and the Lorebook, which you write and keep current yourself.
- It's once. No refill, and NovelAI has "no plans" for a free version. After 50 clicks the choice is a subscription or nothing.
- The subscription bills every month. $10, $15 or $25 whether you wrote that month or not. And it bills a card in US dollars, which is where a declined NovelAI payment usually starts.
- You don't know the trial's settings. NovelAI doesn't publish the trial's context or maximum output on its pages.
A better test for a whole book: KudoNovel
The question a 50-click trial can't answer is the one a novelist is asking: does the AI still know chapter 1 when you're on chapter 12? KudoNovel gives you one free credit to try it, once your email is confirmed, and you spend it on your own pages. After that there's nothing monthly, only one-off packs: $3.50 for 100 credits (about a short novel), $7.50 for 500 or $12.50 for 1,000.
What NovelAI leaves to you in the Memory box and the Lorebook, KudoNovel fills in from your prose. The story bible (characters, places, items, events) and a summary of the whole book keep up as you write, and the next beat is planned from them. Both sit in the sidebar, where you can read them and correct anything the AI got wrong.
| NovelAI | KudoNovel | |
|---|---|---|
| To start | 50 text generations once, then $10–$25 a month | 1 free credit, then $3.50 for 100 credits, about a short novel; no subscription |
| What the AI remembers | Recent text up to the tier's window, plus the Memory, Author's Note and Lorebook you maintain | The story bible and whole-book summary, kept up as you write |
| Content | The FAQ describes review for Explore posts; it doesn't address explicit text | No content filter of KudoNovel's own; romance, horror, dark and explicit themes are your call within the law |
| Where it runs | Browser | Browser; the book saves to your account and syncs across devices |
| Bringing a NovelAI story | Its own .story format | Import a NovelAI .story file; a NovelAI lorebook imports as bible entries |
The practical next step
Use NovelAI's trial for what it's good at: a few clicks to see whether you like how its model continues a scene. If what you have is a book, test on the book. Export the story you started in NovelAI as a .story file, import it in KudoNovel (My Books → Import, with your lorebook as bible entries), and write the next chapter with the whole story in context. For how the two tools compare beyond the first week, read NovelAI alternative for long novels; for other tools with a free way in, free AI story generators and their real limits.