Friends & Fables Pricing (2026): Plans, Credits, and Whether It's Still Worth Paying For
Friends & Fables costs $0, $19.95, $29.95 or $39.95 a month: a free tier of up to 25 turns a day, then three plans with unlimited standard turns that differ in party size, context room and a monthly grant of credits for premium models and images. That part is simple. What makes this page worth reading in September 2026 is what happened at the studio — because it changes what your money is buying.
On 4 September 2026 the studio behind Friends & Fables put big new updates on hold until 2027 to keep building Craft, its newer platform. Friends & Fables is still running, still taking subscriptions, and still getting model refreshes. But a subscription today buys the game as it stands, not the one it was on its way to becoming.
Prices below were verified on the studio’s own pricing page on 24 September 2026; everything else comes from its help centre and dated patch notes. For how to play, see our Friends & Fables guide. For whether the game is good, see our review. For what the whole category charges, see what an AI RPG actually costs.
Access disclosure: we have never been given comped access to Friends & Fables. This page also discusses Craft, made by the same studio, whose developers provided beta access and a subscription for our coverage of Craft. No conditions were attached, and this guide is independent and unpaid — we do not accept payment for coverage.
The Four Plans
| Free | Starter | Pro | Legend | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly price | $0 | $19.95 | $29.95 | $39.95 |
| Yearly price | — | $199.50 | $299.50 | $399.50 |
| Turns | Up to 25 a day | Unlimited standard | Unlimited standard | Unlimited standard |
| Players per campaign | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
| Mentions per message | 1 | 2 | 3 | 5 |
| Custom block characters | 4,000 | 6,500 | 9,000 | 13,500 |
| Text to speech | — | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Monthly bonus credits | — | 100 | 300 | 600 |
Every plan, free included, gets long-term memories, unlimited campaign slots and unlimited access to featured and public worlds. On every plan your friends play for free — only the host needs a subscription, and the host’s plan sets the size of the table. Yearly billing is ten months’ price for twelve.
What Counts as a Turn
This is the question that decides whether the free tier is enough for you, and the studio’s answer is generous:
“A turn is anytime Franz (the game master) takes a turn by sending you a message. It does not matter how many messages you send to Franz, it only matters how many he sends to you.”
So a free player gets 25 replies from Franz a day, and anything you type between them — planning with your party, talking to a friend in the chat — costs nothing. On the paid plans, “unlimited” means unlimited standard turns: every reply written by one of the standard narration models. The premium ones cost credits.
What the Plans Really Differ On
Once you pay, turns stop being the difference. Three things are:
Party size. Four, five or six players. If your group is five people, Pro is the cheapest plan that seats you, and that decides it before anything else does.
Mentions. An @-mention forces a character, place or item into Franz’s context for that message — the most reliable way to make him remember something specific. Starter gets two per message, Legend five. In a busy scene with three NPCs and a magic item, that is a real limit.
Custom block characters. This is the size of the Working Context blocks you write yourself — pinned notes, instructions, memories. It is easy to misread. The studio has a help article on exactly this: people see Legend’s 13,500-character limit, set it beside a competitor’s “32k token” context, and decide Friends & Fables gives you less. In the studio’s words, “Context Block Limits ≠ Total Context Used”. Your blocks are one slice. On top of them Franz gets the plot, the scene, part of the chat history, and a research step that pulls in memories. A bigger block limit means more room for what you pin by hand, not a bigger memory.
Text to speech is on every paid plan and not the free one.
Credits: What They Buy
Credits arrived on 2 December 2025, and the studio said they were supplemental: “Our goal is for the standard offerings to always be great, and optionally offer higher quality AI to those who want to pay for it.”
Where they come from:
- The monthly grant — 100, 300 or 600 on your renewal date. They stack and roll over, so a quiet month is not wasted.
- Credit packs, a one-off purchase. When it announced them the studio said “the lowest pack starting at $5”; the pack list sits inside the app. Packs are also the only way to play without a subscription — the studio pitched them to people who “play in bursts”.
- Referrals and contests (below).
What they cost, as of each dated patch note:
| Use | Credits | When set |
|---|---|---|
| Premium narration — Grok 4.5 | 5 per turn | 6 Aug 2026 (replaced Gemini 3.1 Pro at 6) |
| Scene image — Nano Banana 2 | 15 | 4 Mar 2026 |
| Image — Seedream 4.5 | 12 | 5 Dec 2025 |
| Image — GPT-Image-1.5 | 9 | 28 Dec 2025 |
| Image — Grok Imagine | 6 | 4 Mar 2026 |
| Image edit — Flux 2 Flash | 3 | 28 Dec 2025 |
| Background removal | 1 | 5 Dec 2025 |
| Images — Sana, SDXL Lightning | Free | 2 Dec 2025 |
Two rules worth knowing. Scene generation — a picture of what is happening right now — only works with the premium image models, so it always costs credits. And the studio says it does not charge credits when a model errors out; your account page has a credit history if you want to check.
What the grant is worth in play (our arithmetic): Starter’s 100 credits is 20 Grok 4.5 turns a month, or about six Nano Banana 2 scenes. Pro’s 300 is 60 turns; Legend’s 600 is 120. That is enough to put a premium model on the big scenes — a negotiation, a betrayal, a boss’s last words — and nowhere near enough to run a campaign on one. Nothing is lost by that: in the studio’s own words, a narration model “does not change things like combat mechanics or the research step”. A premium model writes better. It does not remember better.
One free-tier detail. When the studio added the MiMo model in December 2025, it said MiMo would cost free-plan players 1 credit a turn. MiMo was replaced by Hy-3 in May 2026, and no note since has said how the free tier and credits interact. Check in the app before you buy a pack to stretch the free tier.
How to Get Free Credits
There is no promo-code programme in the studio’s help centre or patch notes. There are two real ways:
- The referral programme. Share a campaign invite link or a published world’s link. When a new player clicks it, signs up, and later subscribes, you get 1,000 credits. The rules are strict: they must use your link before signing up, existing accounts do not count, and the studio watches for abuse. Credits for referred sign-ups alone were stopped on 5 December 2025, in the studio’s words because “the sign up referral system has kept being abused”.
- Creator contests. The studio has run creator spotlight contests paying credits — the winter 2025 one paid “between 100 to 10,000 credits”. The most recent one in the patch notes was March 2026.
How the Price Got Here
The prices on the table are about ten months old. On 1 November 2025 the studio announced the current $19.95 / $29.95 / $39.95, effective 1 December. It said prices had “stayed the same since launch” while costs climbed with each feature — image generation, text to speech, memories, lore pages, better models. The same note gave every paid plan Fenix, the better narration model that had been Legend-only, and promised the monthly credits that arrived a month later.
That sequence explains the plan table. The upgrade that justified the price — Fenix for all — was given to every tier, so turns and narration quality are the same on all three paid plans. What rises with the price is table size, mentions, block room and credits.
The News That Changes the Answer
Friends & Fables’ last big gameplay update was class features, subclasses and feats, on 25 November 2025. What came after was mostly credits, an image studio, new models and fixes. Then came the studio’s own announcements, in its own words:
| Date | What the studio said |
|---|---|
| 25 Feb 2026 | Combat can’t be rebuilt until “the narration engine and state update system” are rewritten first. A prototype for that has become a separate app: Craft. The plan is “to support both apps”. |
| 15 May 2026 | An apology “for the lack of updates to F&F recently” — the team has been “working nonstop on Craft”. |
| 5 Aug 2026 | Craft reaches open beta. Friends & Fables’ goal shrinks from “a perfect replica of 5e” to “a 5e-like experience”. Brand-new features such as music or a world-building assistant are “unlikely to be coming to F&F”. Annual subscribers are offered prorated refunds, and credits can be moved to Craft until 31 August. |
| 4 Sep 2026 | ”We’ve decided to keep the development focus on Craft and put big new F&F updates on hold until 2027.” |
The 4 September note is unusually direct, and it deserves quoting fairly. It says “it has already been nine months since F&F received a substantial update”. It also says: “F&F is not going anywhere. We’re committed to keeping it running for as long as people love it and want to keep playing, and we still intend to return to it in 2027. This is a pause in new development, not the end of F&F.” And it offers a way out: “If this changes how you feel about supporting F&F, we completely understand, and we’re happy to provide a refund.”
So what does a subscription buy now? Concretely, the “not yet” items from the November class update are waiting until 2027 at the earliest. Those are feats that grant spells, automatic stat changes, reactions from feats, and NPCs using class features. The combat rewrite the February log promised is waiting too, and so is the full move to 2024 rules. Our guide is written for the game as it is.
So, Is It Worth It?
Our review scored Friends & Fables 3.9, third on our board, and that score is for the game you can play today. It ties for the top of our Mechanical Depth and Determinism & Fairness axes. The same review gave it Longevity — 2, for how badly long campaigns hold together, and that was before the pause. Nothing in the pause makes the game worse today. It removes the reason to expect it to get better soon.
| If you are… | Our read |
|---|---|
| A group that wants 5e-style fights on a real map, now | Worth it. Up to six players at one table, and only the host pays. Pick the plan by your party size. |
| Curious, but not sure | Start free. Twenty-five Franz replies a day, and three players, is enough to learn whether you like how it plays. |
| About to pay yearly | Don’t. Yearly saves two months, but the studio itself has been refunding annual plans since August. Monthly costs a little more and leaves you free to go. |
| Paying for what it will become | Not this year. Everything on the roadmap is on hold until 2027. |
| Mostly after better narration | Pay for a plan and spend the credits on key scenes. Don’t buy packs to run a whole campaign on a premium model. |
| Frustrated with Franz already | Look at Craft. The studio’s own advice to frustrated players is to “give Craft a shot”. |
On that last row: Craft scores 4.3 on our board. It is the studio’s successor and where its development now goes, and it ties Friends & Fables at the top of Mechanical Depth. It is also a different product, with a different pricing shape. Craft vs Friends & Fables goes through the choice, and moving your world from Friends & Fables to Craft covers the move. The one-time credit transfer to Craft closed on 31 August 2026.
Cancelling and Refunds
To cancel: open your account settings (the profile widget, bottom left), choose Manage Subscription, then Cancel.
The published refund policy:
- Monthly plan — email [email protected] and the studio refunds your last month in full.
- Annual plan — refundable within the first 30 days, and not after.
- Bonus credits from a monthly grant are taken back when a refund is issued.
- Credit packs are non-refundable.
- After a first refund, any later request is decided case by case.
The pause announcements go further than the written policy. In August the studio offered annual subscribers prorated refunds for their unused months, and in September it offered a refund to anyone the pause changed things for. Both are dated public statements. If the pause is your reason, say so when you email.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does Friends & Fables cost? There is a free tier, then three paid plans: Starter at $19.95 a month, Pro at $29.95 and Legend at $39.95. Paying yearly costs ten months’ worth — $199.50, $299.50 and $399.50. Prices verified on fables.gg on 24 September 2026.
Is Friends & Fables free? It has a real free tier: up to 25 turns a day, three-player campaigns, one mention per message and a 4,000-character limit on custom context blocks, with long-term memories and unlimited campaigns included. A turn is counted only when Franz replies, so your own messages are free.
What are credits in Friends & Fables? Credits pay for the premium extras on top of a plan: premium narration models, premium image generation, scene images and image editing. Paid plans get a monthly credit grant — 100 on Starter, 300 on Pro, 600 on Legend — which stacks and rolls over, and you can buy credit packs, which the studio said start at $5. Standard narration never costs credits on a paid plan.
How do you get free credits on Friends & Fables? The documented way is the referral programme: you earn 1,000 credits when a new player who arrived through your campaign invite link or shared world link later subscribes. Credits for referred sign-ups alone were ended in December 2025 because of abuse. The studio has also paid credits as prizes in its creator spotlight contests.
Is Friends & Fables worth it in 2026? For a group that wants D&D 5e-style play with a real battle map today, yes — the free tier is enough to find out, and then pay monthly. What you should not pay for is the roadmap: on 4 September 2026 the studio put big new Friends & Fables updates on hold until 2027 to focus on Craft, so buy the game as it is now, not as it was promised to become.
Can you get a refund from Friends & Fables? The published policy refunds your last month on a monthly plan if you email support, and an annual plan within its first 30 days. Monthly bonus credits are taken back when a refund is issued, and credit pack purchases are not refundable. When it announced the pause, the studio also said it was happy to refund anyone it changed things for.
What happened to Friends & Fables and Craft? They come from the same studio. Craft began as a prototype for rebuilding Friends & Fables, grew into a separate platform, and reached open beta on 5 August 2026. The studio then narrowed Friends & Fables to a 5e-like game, and on 4 September 2026 moved development to Craft, with big Friends & Fables updates on hold until 2027. Friends & Fables keeps running.
Prices and plan contents verified on fables.gg/pricing, 24 September 2026. Credit costs are as announced in the dated Friends & Fables patch notes and may have changed since; the in-app price is the one that counts. Quotations are from the studio’s patch notes, help centre and refund policy.
Product names and trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Arcanum is not affiliated with Friends & Fables.