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Plans and the free trial

What Free and Pay As You Go cover, what the 5-day trial adds, how AI credits work, and when you're charged.

Which billing system applies?

This page describes legacy per-website billing. If your Billing page has a shared wallet and the Free, Flex, Lite and Pro organization plans, follow Organization plans instead. New organization billing uses one-time starter credits, not the legacy Free monthly refill or $10 trial allowance described below. Existing organizations keep their terms until a reviewed migration.

You can build a website before you pay anything. This page explains where the free part ends, what the trial adds, and what "AI credits" actually means — the one piece of the billing that isn't obvious.

Starting free

Signing up puts you on the Free plan. No card, no trial clock running down. It gives you:

  • One website, built with the assistant just like any other.
  • A free address on our platform — your-business.maxaibuilder.com — that always shows your latest work.
  • $1 in AI credits every month.
  • Managed hosting and SSL.

That's a genuine website on a real, shareable address. What it isn't is a website on your domain: connecting your-business.com needs a paid plan, and so does a second website.

$1 is a small amount on purpose: enough to start a conversation and see how the assistant works, not enough to build a site out. When you want room to actually finish something, that's what the trial is for.

The 5-day free trial

Choosing Pay As You Go, Lite, or Pro starts a 5-day free trial. You go through Stripe Checkout and enter a card so the subscription can continue when the trial ends, but nothing is charged during those five days.

During the trial you get:

  • $10 in AI credits for each website, available straight away rather than spread over a month. This flat amount is the same on every paid plan — the trial is there to introduce the product, not to sell you the difference between the tiers.
  • Everything else your chosen plan includes, including connecting your own domain and publishing to it.

The trial is a one-time thing per organization. Canceling and resubscribing later starts the paid plan directly.

At the end of the five days your first payment is taken. Lite or Pro monthly credits begin; Pay As You Go continues with the non-expiring credits you choose to buy. Nothing about your website changes at that moment — it stays exactly where it was.

To cancel before then, open Billing in your organization and use the Stripe billing portal. Cancel any time before day five and you aren't charged.

The paid plans

All paid plans are priced per website, so the bill follows how many websites you actually keep. Adding a website adds one website's worth to the subscription; removing one takes it away again. Annual billing is available for Lite and Pro and is paid up front for the year.

Pay As You Go — $2.95 per website per month. Connect your own domain and buy non-expiring AI credits only when you need them. This plan has no recurring monthly AI allowance and no annual billing option.

Lite — $20 per website per month, or $192 per website per year (that's $16 a month, a 20% saving). Connect your own domain, add as many websites as you need, and each website carries $10 in AI credits every month.

Pro — $50 per website per month, or $300 per website per year (that's $25 a month, a 50% saving). Everything in Lite, with $25 in AI credits per website each month, priority support, and early access to new features.

The practical difference is whether you want to purchase every AI credit as needed or have credits refresh each month. Pay As You Go keeps the fixed website cost low; Lite and Pro bundle progressively larger monthly allowances.

Neither choice is a commitment. Your organization's Billing page lists every plan with the one you are on marked, and moving between them takes effect immediately, with Stripe charging or crediting the difference for the part of the period you have already paid for. Pay As You Go is monthly-only; Lite and Pro offer monthly or annual billing. See Billing and invoices for how that looks.

Comparing plans before you sign up

The pricing page shows the currently available offer, with monthly pricing first and the full upfront amount for annual billing. Each card also shows the website-form attachment limit. The questions below the plans explain credit expiry, trial billing and domain costs. Buying or renewing a domain is separate from connecting one you already own.

Website forms currently accept files up to 10 MB each, with five files per submission on every plan. Individual forms may restrict formats further. See the forms guide for supported attachments. These limits refer to files submitted through forms, not media-library uploads or total website storage.

What AI credits are

Every message you send the assistant runs a build, and every build costs a small amount of real money to run. Rather than counting messages — which would make a one-word tweak cost the same as a whole new page — we measure what each build actually costs and draw it from your website's credits.

Some things worth knowing:

  • Credits belong to each website, not to the organization. Building one website never eats another one's allowance.
  • Included credits on Free, Lite, and Pro refresh monthly and do not roll over. Pay As You Go has no recurring allowance. Purchased credits remain in the website's bank without expiry on every plan.
  • Small changes cost very little. Building a whole website from a brief draws far more than nudging a heading does.
  • You can see where you stand on your dashboard and on your organization's billing page, per website, for the current cycle.

When included credits run out, the website automatically uses its purchased bank. When both are empty, building pauses. A billing manager can buy $5, $10, $25, $50, $100, or $250 in credits, or move to a plan with a larger included allowance. Unused purchased credits stay available for later. See Billing and invoices for purchases and history. Everything already built stays where it is, and the rest of the app keeps working.

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