Plans
Pricing and plans
Recording your own narration is free and unlimited. Studio Plus adds AI illustration, story drafts, and private cloud backup so the recording survives the phone.
The most important thing here is free
Recording your own voice reading the book costs nothing. Not a trial, not a teaser, not three pages and then a paywall. Unlimited narration, on every page, on every project, with no account and no internet connection required.
That is deliberate. The voice is the part of this that still matters in twenty years, and we are not going to hold it hostage.
So what does Studio Plus do?
Two things: it helps you make the book worth listening to, and it makes sure you never lose it.
The line is simple and we do not move it: if it runs on your device, it’s free. If it needs a third-party AI service, it needs Studio Plus. Adjusting a photo’s warmth is a normal phone operation and we will not pretend it is premium. Generating an illustration genuinely costs us money each time, so that is what a subscription pays for.
Free
$0 always
Includes the part that matters most — your own voice, on every page.
- Unlimited narration recorded in your own voice
- Import audio so someone else can read it
- Background music, with ducking under the narration
- Full drawing canvas, brushes, colours, eraser, undo and redo
- Photo and video import from your phone
- Light, contrast, colour, and warmth, plus curated looks
- Unlimited projects and pages
- PDF and video export, and .ddstory project archives
Studio Plus
From $9.99 per month
Makes the book worth listening to — and makes sure you never lose it.
- Everything in Free, including unlimited narration
- Private cloud backup, so a lost phone is not a lost recording
- Sketch to illustration and photo to illustration
- AI first drafts for stories, travel diaries, and captions
- Monthly AI creation credits, renewed every month
- Generated narration when you want a voice that isn't yours
- Short animated clips from a still picture
Credit packs
Coming later
One-off top-ups for the months when you are making more than usual.
- Buy extra credits without changing your plan
- Purchased credits never expire while your account is open
- Subscription credits are always spent first
- Planned after we see how much people actually use
Making the book worth listening to
A recording is better when there is something worth looking at while it plays. Studio Plus turns a rough sketch into a finished illustration, drafts the words when you are staring at a blank page, and lays the whole thing out for print.
You get a monthly allowance of credits and full visibility into what each action spends. An illustration is 1 credit. A story draft is 1 credit. A short Economy video clip is 1. An eight-second Balanced clip is 4. Generated narration — for a language you don’t speak, or a character voice you can’t do — is 2 credits a page; your own voice remains free and unlimited.
The exact charge is shown on the button before you press it, every time. See how credits work.
Never losing it
This is the other half, and for a lot of people it is the bigger half.
A recording of your child’s own story, read in your own voice, is not regenerable. If the phone goes in a puddle, no amount of money brings it back. Optional private cloud backup for Studio Plus means the recording survives the device it was made on.
You can also export a .ddstory archive on the free plan and keep it yourself —
we would genuinely rather you did that than lose anything. See
back up and move your projects.
Why not unlimited?
Because we would then have to either lose money on the people who use it most, or quietly throttle them and pretend we hadn’t. Credits are less comfortable to market and more honest to live with. You always know where you stand, and you never get a surprise.
Free is not a trial
There is no countdown, no watermark, no page cap, and no nag screen. A family that draws their own pictures, writes their own words, records a parent reading them, and exports the result pays nothing, forever.
That is not a loophole — it is the app working as intended, and plenty of people should use it exactly that way.
Refunds
Purchases, renewals, and refunds are handled by Apple and Google. See manage your subscription for how to request one.
Separately, if an individual AI generation fails or is refused, its credits come back automatically without you asking.
Pricing questions
Is there a free version?
Do I have to pay to record my own voice?
How much does Studio Plus cost?
Do I need a subscription to keep my books?
What happens to unused credits?
Do annual subscribers get all the credits at once?
Can I buy extra credits?
Is there a family or education plan?
How do I cancel?
Start with one drawing
Download Doodle Dragon Studio, pick a sketch off the fridge, and see it as a finished page in a few minutes. The free tier is genuinely free — no trial clock, no credit card.