1DesignTool is the same studio free and paid — every template, every steering tool, the design-kit gate, codebase mode and your own coding agent. The free tier is capped on volume and stamps a small watermark on rendered output; a Pro license removes both. There is no account wall in either tier.
What the free tier covers
Free is a real, working studio: unlimited projects, all 14 templates, all 16 agent CLIs, live preview and present mode, steering (picks, comments, Tweaks, Designer Talk), the gate, and ZIP/HTML code export — the files are already yours on disk, so those exports are never metered.
The caps are lifetime counters, not monthly resets, and each one is enforced by the same number the License tab shows:
| Free cap | Limit |
|---|---|
| Prompts (turns) | 300 |
| Renders (PNG · PDF · video · Figma · mobile) | 50 |
| Live versions per project | 3 |
| Variant builds | 4 |
| Saved design systems | 3 |
Only your prompts count — retries, crash resumes and the gate's own auto-fix passes are never billed. Archiving a version frees its slot. The live meters sit in the usage pill under a project and under Settings → Usage.
What Pro unlocks
A Pro license lifts every cap to unlimited and turns off the watermark on renders. It's tied to you, not your machine: choose 1, 3 or 5 devices at checkout — $29 / $59 / $89, one-time. A Pro license covers 12 months of updates; the build you have keeps working forever after the window ends. (Free always updates, so nothing expires either way.)
Activate a license
Buy on the site and the license key lands in your inbox. In the app, open Settings → License, paste the key into Activate, and it verifies and flips to Pro in place — the meters and watermark disappear and every locked row on the license page turns unlimited. Deactivate on the same tab frees a seat for a different machine.
Tip: Pro is about the studio, not the model — your agent CLI keeps billing to its own account in either tier, and 1DesignTool never sees those keys.
If a cap bites mid-work
A spent cap refuses the next thing it counts — a spent renders cap blocks new render exports, a spent prompts cap blocks new turns — while everything already built keeps working: previews render, history restores, ZIP/HTML export runs. The refusal names the row that explains it, and Settings → Usage shows the meters in full.