The Free Tier Is the Real Product

You've met the other kind of "free."

You sign up, you start building, the idea is flowing — and then you reach for the good reverb, or the chorus, or the export button, and there's a little lock icon. The free version was never meant for you to finish in. It was a trailer for the paid one.

We didn't want to build that. So we didn't.

#Where the line is today

Today, the free plan opens the tools that make the music. Not a sampler of them. The whole set.

• Every synth engine and every drum engine — each one its own kind of synthesis, built from scratch with real DSP.
• Every effect, on every track, bus and master.
• All four surfaces: the DAW, the design editor, the video editor, and the writing room.
• Every factory sound — each one made on these engines.

The free tier isn't a crippled demo. It's the real thing, and you can finish work in it.

So what do the paid plans add? Headroom, mostly the things that cost us real money to run: storage in the cloud, and AI, the generation that hits real models on real GPUs. Free comes with starter storage, a project limit and a monthly AI credit allowance for the assistant and Journal. Plus, at $6 a month, raises the storage, removes the project limit and lets you host live collab sessions, with no AI bundled in. Pro, at $10 a month, adds the AI on top: a much bigger credit allowance, plus AI images, video, upscaling and stem splitting (the generation that costs us GPU time on every run). Pricing has today's exact numbers.

The short version: create for free, pay for room or AI when you need it. Storage and AI have a marginal cost we can't wave away. The creative engine mostly doesn't. Once it's built, your thousandth beat costs us about what your first did. That's why we don't charge for it.

#Why we feel strongly about this

The talent in this generation isn't the bottleneck. Access is.

There's a kid right now with a laptop, a cracked idea for a hook, and no money, who is exactly as capable as someone with a rack of plugins — they just can't afford to find out. The tools to make music have quietly become a luxury good. A real production setup can cost more in monthly subscriptions than a bedroom artist makes from their music in a year. That math keeps people out who should be in.

We think that's the actual problem worth solving — not making a slightly nicer compressor, but making the whole thing reachable. If you can open a browser, you can open a studio. That's the bar we wanted to clear.

It's also the kind of company we want to be. A real free tier says who Onomo is for: the person who couldn't otherwise be here.

#The honest part

A model like this only works if the paid reasons are real, not invented. We're not going to fake scarcity to push you to upgrade — no "you've used your 3 free songs," no watermark on your export, no nagging the second you do something good. You'll upgrade when you need more room to keep your work, or more AI to lean on.

You also won't find "free forever" anywhere on this site, and that's on purpose. We're a small team, we're early, and we don't know yet what running Onomo at scale will cost. We'd rather tell you that than make a promise we can't be sure we'll keep. Plans, prices and limits describe Onomo today and can change as it grows. If they do, you'll hear it from us first, and anything you've bought or made stays yours.

What we can stand behind is the belief underneath: the tools to make music shouldn't cost a month's pay. That's the reason the line sits where it does.

Create for free. Grow into Plus or Pro when you need the room. Make something either way.