The three plans
Scholar — Free. The essentials, unlimited: documents, sources, every citation style, and Word export. You also get a monthly taste of the AI — one Cold Start, ten Scholar AI questions, and a few Proofreads each month, plus unlimited inline citation suggestions as you write.
Fellow — $9.99/mo (or $99/year). Unlocks the integrity moat: authorship & proof-of-work reports, citation & claim checking, daily Document Audit, Research Radar with email digests, literature discovery & synthesis, daily AI (Cold Start, Scholar AI, Proofreading), and collaboration (view & comment).
Chair — $25/mo (or $250/year). Everything in Fellow, with roughly double the AI limits, unlimited proofreading, document version history, Folio Surveyor, and direct founder support.
Annual billing saves roughly two months versus paying monthly. You can switch between monthly and annual whenever you like.
What "free" really means
Free is a genuine workspace, not a locked demo — you can write, manage a full library, and cite without limits. What is reserved for paid plans is the verifiable-AI moat: the proof-of-work report, integrity checking, discovery, synthesis, Radar, and Surveyor. If you hit a monthly AI limit on the free plan, you will see an upgrade prompt explaining exactly what you have used.
Upgrading
When you trigger a paid feature, Folio shows an upgrade prompt that takes you to a secure checkout. Pick Fellow or Chair, pay, and you'll be brought straight back to Folio — your new plan appears on your account within a few seconds of the payment confirming.
Managing your subscription
Go to Account → Manage Billing to update your card, change plan, or cancel. Billing is handled by our payment provider (LemonSqueezy), so the billing portal lives at app.lemonsqueezy.com/my-orders.
If you cancel, you keep your paid features until the end of the period you have already paid for, then revert to the free Scholar plan — your documents and sources are never deleted.