Plans & Usage

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Overview

For pricing and feature comparisons, visit the pricing page.

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Plans

Sample Vault has four plans:

• Demo Room (free) — try the app with one-time grants for AI features
• Home Studio (subscription) — for individual producers
• Professional Suite (subscription) — for power users with large libraries
• Lifetime (one-time purchase) — own the desktop app outright instead of subscribing; see Lifetime

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How AI Usage Works

Library size is unlimited on every plan — your samples stay on disk and analysis (BPM, key, sound characteristics) is always free and runs locally. Only AI-powered operations are metered, and they draw from up to three pools depending on the operation and your plan.

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Premium Requests

Used by Smart Chat and AI Collections. Granted monthly and reset on your billing date with no rollover. If a Smart Chat or AI Collection request fails downstream, the request is refunded automatically.

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Library Coverage

Used by AI directory indexing — the pass that tags each sample with genres, moods, creators, and sample packs. Measured in indexed samples, not folders. Unused monthly coverage rolls over into a permanent add-on balance at the end of each billing period (capped at one full month’s grant). Top-up packs are also added to this balance and never expire. If indexing fails on a batch, every sample in that batch is refunded in full.

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Starter Pools

Every account without an active subscription — Demo Room, and Lifetime holders who haven’t added a subscription — gets two one-time grants:

• A pool of AI actions shared across the assistant’s AI features — Deep Search, the assistant chat, the Sequencer Designer, and library Suggestions all draw from it. Heavier actions cost more from the same pool, so a single Designer run spends more than a search.
• A grant of indexed samples for AI directory indexing, drawn from its own coverage pool.

On a paid plan these AI features are effectively unlimited under fair use; the starter grants are the free way to try them. Starter grants don’t refill, don’t roll over, and aren’t refunded on failure. When they’re exhausted, upgrade to a paid plan or configure a BYOK key to keep using AI.

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Bring Your Own Key (BYOK)

You can configure your own OpenRouter API key in Settings → AI to route AI requests through your account. Two modes are available:

• Key only — every AI call uses your key; no Sample Vault pool is touched.
• Pools first, then key — operations draw from your plan’s pools, and silently fall through to BYOK once a pool is empty.

BYOK is also the only way to enable AI features on Demo Room without consuming your starter grants.

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Lifetime

Lifetime is a one-time license that unlocks the desktop app for good, with all future updates included. There’s no recurring subscription. What it includes:

• The full desktop app — unlimited library size, the Library and all its views, Sound Profile, Similar Samples, Quick Actions, tempo and key lock, Ableton Link, and unlimited projects.
• AI through your own key. Lifetime doesn’t come with managed AI pools, so Deep Search, AI indexing, Smart chat, and AI collections run on a key you bring yourself. Without a key, you still get the same one-time starter grants as Demo Room.
• Your own cloud, optional. There’s no built-in cloud storage, but you can back up and sync through your own Dropbox or Google Drive — no subscription required.
• Activated on your devices — see Device activation below.

You can add a Home Studio or Professional Suite subscription on top of Lifetime whenever you want managed AI pools and built-in cloud storage. While the subscription is active its allowances apply; your Lifetime license stays yours regardless.

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Device activation

A Lifetime license is tied to your devices rather than to an active subscription. The first time you open the app on a machine, give the device a name and activate it. The license can stay active on up to three devices at once. To move the license to a different machine once you’ve reached the limit, revoke one of your activated devices from the Manage devices page, then activate the new one. Revoking frees the slot right away.

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Storage

Storage caps apply only to samples uploaded to cloud storage. Local files on your disk never count. Storage caps are max-preserving across concurrent entitlements (the highest one wins) and never shrink on downgrade. You can also route uploads through your own Dropbox or Google Drive instead of the built-in cloud. Those uploads count toward your own provider’s storage, not Sample Vault’s caps — and because the files land in your account, they don’t need a Sample Vault subscription. Only the built-in cloud requires an active Home Studio or Professional Suite plan.

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Browser Access

Browser access — using Sample Vault from any modern browser at samplevault.ai — is included on Home Studio and Professional Suite. Demo Room and Lifetime users see an upgrade prompt at sign-in. Only samples already uploaded to cloud storage are visible in the browser tab.

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Monitoring Usage

Open Settings → Billing & Usage for per-pool meters with reset dates. The avatar in the top navigation also shows a small dot when a pool is running low — open the menu to see which one.

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When You Hit Limits

• Premium requests exhausted — Smart Chat and AI Collections pause until your next billing reset, or until you add a BYOK key.
• Coverage exhausted — New AI indexing jobs queue any remaining headroom and skip the rest. The Add Directory dialog shows up front how many samples will be queued vs. skipped.
• Starter AI-actions pool exhausted — On Demo Room, or a Lifetime license without a subscription, the shared AI features pause until you upgrade or configure BYOK. Active features like Deep Search, the assistant chat, and the Sequencer Designer stop running; passive assists like library Suggestions and prompt ideas simply go quiet. Local browsing, playback, and the everyday free Library search keep working as normal.
• Fair-use cap hit (paid) — You’ll see a brief slow-down message; capacity recovers within seconds to a minute.
• Storage cap hit — New uploads pause; existing uploaded samples remain accessible.

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Managing Your Subscription

• Demo Room users: Click “Upgrade Plan” in Settings → Billing & Usage to see paid options.
• Paid subscribers: Use “Manage Your Subscription” to update payment details, change plans, or cancel.