Obsidian AI Plugin Pricing: Monthly vs Yearly

If your thinking lives in Obsidian, the pricing question is not which feature tier unlocks the workflow you need. SystemSculpt has one paid product. Monthly and Yearly unlock the same plugin.

The choice is how you want to pay for it.

• Monthly: $9 per month
• Yearly: $90 a year, two months free compared with Monthly
• Credits: separate one-time top-ups for metered hosted operations

Both plans use a 5-device personal license and include a monthly hosted-credit allowance. Installation is free, and desktop chat with your installed, signed-in Claude Code or Codex needs no SystemSculpt account or plan. Eligible new accounts can claim 500 one-time hosted credits without a card; an active paid subscription is not required for that starter access.

Lifetime is no longer sold. Lifetime licenses bought earlier keep working as before.

The short answer

Choose Monthly if you are still deciding whether SystemSculpt belongs in your daily vault.

Choose Yearly if you already use Obsidian as a lasting part of how you research, write, plan, or run projects. A year of Yearly costs $90; twelve months of Monthly cost $108.

If you are not sure, stay on Monthly. You can switch to Yearly later without losing access, and your Monthly subscription is cancelled for you.

What both plans include

Monthly and Yearly unlock the same SystemSculpt experience. Neither plan hides a better feature tier behind a higher price.

You get the Obsidian plugin with:

• AI chat grounded in your vault context
• semantic and keyword search across your notes
• audio recording and transcription saved as Markdown
• document processing
• Studio image editing and video generation
• agent workflows with approval controls that depend on the backend and mode; Auto can create and edit notes without asking

SystemSculpt AI runs hosted chat, semantic indexing, transcription, document processing and video generation. You do not need a separate model-provider account or an API key for those hosted features. Studio's inline image editor crops and annotates existing images in Obsidian without a model call. The SystemSculpt AI guide explains what the service handles for you.

The practical difference between the plans is billing, not capability.

Monthly at $9

Monthly is the lower-commitment path. It is the right choice when you want to test SystemSculpt inside a real vault before committing to a year.

Use Monthly if you want to answer questions such as:

• Does semantic search find notes you routinely lose?
• Does transcription produce Markdown you actually reuse?
• Do agent approvals fit the way you protect important files?
• Does keeping the workflow inside Obsidian reduce app switching for you?

You can cancel before the next renewal. There is no reason to commit to a year before the product has earned a place in your workflow.

Yearly at $90

Yearly is the same paid Pro plugin experience, billed once a year. The license is personal and covers up to 5 devices, and the hosted-credit allowance still resets every month.

The honest math is simple:

• 12 months of Monthly cost $108
• a year of Yearly costs $90

Yearly therefore saves $18 a year, two months of Monthly. It renews each year until you cancel, and cancelling stops the next renewal while you keep access to the end of the year you paid for.

That does not mean everyone should choose it immediately. Yearly makes sense when your vault is already where your work lives and you expect SystemSculpt to remain part of that system. If you are still experimenting, Monthly is the clearer choice.

What credits pay for

Your license and your hosted usage are separate.

Monthly and Yearly provide Pro access with a monthly hosted-credit allowance; they are not required to install the plugin or chat with your own desktop Claude Code or Codex. Credits meter hosted operations that create real processing cost, including transcription, vault indexing, document processing, video generation, and managed AI work.

Credit packs are one-time top-ups. They stay in your account until you use them and do not change your plan.

This separation keeps the pricing honest. A plan means product access with a monthly allowance. It does not promise unlimited hosted compute.

Can you switch from Monthly to Yearly?

Yes. Start Yearly from the pricing page and it begins immediately.

You do not need to cancel Monthly yourself. Starting Yearly sets your Monthly subscription to cancel at the end of the period you already paid for, so it does not renew.

Which plan should you choose?

Choose Monthly when:

• you want the lowest upfront commitment
• you are testing the product in your real vault
• you prefer flexible recurring billing

Choose Yearly when:

• Obsidian is already a long-term part of your work
• you expect to keep using SystemSculpt for at least ten months
• you would rather pay once a year than every month

If the answer is not obvious yet, choose Monthly. The upgrade path stays open.

One useful way to decide is to separate product confidence from usage volume. The license answers whether you want SystemSculpt available in your vault. Credits answer how much hosted processing you plan to run. A person who chats and searches regularly but transcribes only occasionally may need very few top-ups. A meeting-heavy workflow may use credits faster even though the plugin license is identical.

Start with the smallest commitment that produces real evidence. Test the workflows you expect to repeat, inspect credit use in the dashboard, then decide whether a year makes sense. Do not choose Yearly because a comparison table says it is cheaper. Choose it when the product has earned a stable place in your vault.

See the current plans

The live pricing page is the source of truth for plan availability, checkout terms, and credit packs.

Compare Monthly and Yearly on the SystemSculpt pricing page, or review the broader SystemSculpt plugin workflow first.