Pricing

The Core is free. The rest is not priced yet.

Everything below is true today. Where a number has not been decided this page says so, because a price we have not settled is worse than no price at all — you would plan around it.

Tier one of one that has a price

Aardvark Studio Core

Not a trial, not a demo, and not time-limited. It is the reading floor, and it produces a finished artifact of its own.

Free

The dockable workbench and the production project tree
Ingest: ePub plus audiobook, split, transcribed, aligned to the sentence
Scene and beat breakdown, and the entity roster
Book Text with narration follow-along, the annotator and the ePub’s images
Book Assistant — cited answers over one book or a whole portfolio
Semantic search across everything ingested
Reference Library, with polite fetching and separately-coloured citations
Review inbox, review queue and run dashboard
Cost dashboard at rates you set
Narrate chapters and bind a chaptered m4b (with your own TTS endpoint)
Organisations, users, four roles and five settings scopes
The whole in-app help corpus

Get the free Core What it does, in detail

The four products

Licensed per organisation, bought one at a time

There is no bundle, no edition and no starter pack. Each product is a licence your organisation holds; signing in installs what you hold.

Loomwright

Write the book, against a world that checks itself.

Contact for pricing

Produces

A finished book

Needs from you: The Aardvark Studio server · An Anthropic API key

What Loomwright does

VisualBook

Turn the book into a rendered film, timed to its narration.

Contact for pricing

Produces

A long-form video storybook

Needs from you: The Aardvark Studio server · A ComfyUI render host with a GPU · An Anthropic API key

What VisualBook does

LitCaster

Cut and publish a companion podcast from the book.

Contact for pricing

Produces

A published podcast episode

Needs from you: The Aardvark Studio server · An Anthropic API key · A text-to-speech endpoint

What LitCaster does

LookBook

Build the style every book is cast in.

Contact for pricing

Produces

A published casting style

Needs from you: The Aardvark Studio server · A GPU render host · A LoRA training host

What LookBook does

Why every price says “Contact for pricing”

Three commercial decisions are open and each one changes the shape of a price list: whether Loomwright and VisualBook are sold per seat at all — only LitCaster enforces seats today — what a licence tier grants, and what happens when an organisation runs out of seats. Publishing a number before those are settled would mean changing it afterwards.

What you get where

Grouped by capability, not by tier

One table, generated from one data file. The free column is first for the same reason it is first everywhere else on this site.

Which capabilities come with the free Core and which come with each paid product
Capability	CoreFree	Loomwright	VisualBook	LitCaster	LookBook
Getting a book in
Ingest an ePub and its narrated audiobook	Included in Core	Not in Loomwright	Not in VisualBook	Not in LitCaster	Not in LookBook
Split, transcribe and align narration to the prose	Included in Core	Not in Loomwright	Not in VisualBook	Not in LitCaster	Not in LookBook
Scene and beat breakdown	Included in Core	Not in Loomwright	Not in VisualBook	Not in LitCaster	Not in LookBook
Cast, prop and location extraction	Included in Core	Not in Loomwright	Not in VisualBook	Not in LitCaster	Not in LookBook
Write the book here insteadPublishing compiles an EPUB3 and pre-seeds the breakdown.	Not in Core	Included in Loomwright	Not in VisualBook	Not in LitCaster	Not in LookBook
Reading and asking
Book Text with the narration following along	Included in Core	Not in Loomwright	Not in VisualBook	Not in LitCaster	Not in LookBook
Annotation and the ePub’s own images	Included in Core	Not in Loomwright	Not in VisualBook	Not in LitCaster	Not in LookBook
Book Assistant — cited answers over one book or the whole portfolio	Included in Core	Not in Loomwright	Not in VisualBook	Not in LitCaster	Not in LookBook
Semantic search	Included in Core	Not in Loomwright	Not in VisualBook	Not in LitCaster	Not in LookBook
Reference Library — approved outside sources, cited separately	Included in Core	Not in Loomwright	Not in VisualBook	Not in LitCaster	Not in LookBook
Arcs, threads and chapter summaries	Included in Core	Not in Loomwright	Not in VisualBook	Not in LitCaster	Not in LookBook
The world behind the book
World codex — entities, timeline, maps, boards	Not in Core	Included in Loomwright	Not in VisualBook	Not in LitCaster	Not in LookBook
Continuity findings against the reveal and knowledge ledgers	Not in Core	Included in Loomwright	Not in VisualBook	Not in LitCaster	Not in LookBook
Series bible, spoiler-bounded companion, JSON dump	Not in Core	Included in Loomwright	Not in VisualBook	Not in LitCaster	Not in LookBook
Manuscript editor, import and snapshots	Not in Core	Included in Loomwright	Not in VisualBook	Not in LitCaster	Not in LookBook
Audio out
Narrate chapters and bind a chaptered m4bNeeds a TTS endpoint you point the server at.	Included in Core	Not in Loomwright	Not in VisualBook	Not in LitCaster	Not in LookBook
Per-scene narration coverage for an authored manuscript	Not in Core	Included in Loomwright	Not in VisualBook	Not in LitCaster	Not in LookBook
Podcast topics, script and personas	Not in Core	Not in Loomwright	Not in VisualBook	Included in LitCaster	Not in LookBook
Voice library with consent gating	Not in Core	Not in Loomwright	Not in VisualBook	Included in LitCaster	Not in LookBook
Render, master and QC an episode	Not in Core	Not in Loomwright	Not in VisualBook	Included in LitCaster	Not in LookBook
Two-phase publish to distribution targets and a feed	Not in Core	Not in Loomwright	Not in VisualBook	Included in LitCaster	Not in LookBook
Pictures out
Casting to a consistent visual identity	Not in Core	Not in Loomwright	Included in VisualBook	Not in LitCaster	Not in LookBook
LoRA training where identity has to hold	Not in Core	Not in Loomwright	Included in VisualBook	Not in LitCaster	Not in LookBook
Props, sets and the art department	Not in Core	Not in Loomwright	Included in VisualBook	Not in LitCaster	Not in LookBook
Storyboard by beat, with coverage and readiness	Not in Core	Not in Loomwright	Included in VisualBook	Not in LitCaster	Not in LookBook
Assembly — the finished video, timed to the audiobook	Not in Core	Not in Loomwright	Included in VisualBook	Not in LitCaster	Not in LookBook
Build a casting style from reference material	Not in Core	Not in Loomwright	Not in VisualBook	Not in LitCaster	Included in LookBook
Publish a style, verified against the render host	Not in Core	Not in Loomwright	Not in VisualBook	Not in LitCaster	Included in LookBook
Cast a book in a published styleThe choice is a VisualBook surface; the styles come from LookBook.	Not in Core	Not in Loomwright	Included in VisualBook	Not in LitCaster	Included in LookBook
Running it
Review inbox, review queue and run dashboard	Included in Core	Not in Loomwright	Not in VisualBook	Not in LitCaster	Not in LookBook
Cost dashboard at rates you set	Included in Core	Not in Loomwright	Not in VisualBook	Not in LitCaster	Not in LookBook
Organisations, users and roles	Included in Core	Not in Loomwright	Not in VisualBook	Not in LitCaster	Not in LookBook
Per-user seat enforcementThe only product that enforces seats today.	Not in Core	Not in Loomwright	Not in VisualBook	Included in LitCaster	Not in LookBook
Rights holds, disclosure and retention	Not in Core	Not in Loomwright	Not in VisualBook	Included in LitCaster	Not in LookBook

Terms

What a licence is, and what happens to it

What you buy: A licence for your organisation, per product. Signing in reconciles it: a product you are licensed for installs itself, a stale one upgrades, and one whose licence has lapsed is removed. Every archive is verified against a key compiled into the Core before it loads.
Seats: LitCaster is the only product that enforces a per-user seat today. Its licence sells a number of them and a user without one is refused with a message saying so. Loomwright and VisualBook are enforced by visibility — an unlicensed organisation loses their surfaces entirely — and no seat count is shown for them.
Updates: Add-ons are in exact lockstep with the Core. Upgrading the Core invalidates every installed add-on and the next sign-in reconciles them to the matching version. The previous Core stays on disk, so a machine that cannot reach the server after an upgrade is offered a rollback rather than left with no products.
If a licence lapses: The product is removed at the next sign-in and its surfaces go with it. For LitCaster specifically, a lapsed organisation keeps every read and export surface and may not push a new episode into the world. Export what is yours before you let a licence go.
Refunds: UNSET — no refund policy has been written. It will be stated here before anything is sold.

Entitlement is two facts, not one

Whether your organisation is licensed for a product, and whether that product is installed on the machine in front of you. The Your Products screen shows both, so a licence you have bought and not yet received is a row that says so rather than a silence.

Air-gapped and on-premise installs

A deployment that publishes no installers and reaches no internet is a supported configuration, not a broken one. Licences are issued to the organisation and enforced by the server you run.

Everything on this page describes release 1.0.0.