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: 3 Research & start briefs, 10 Scholar AI answers and 3 proofreads a month, plus unlimited inline citation suggestions as you write. You also get 3 authorship certificates & proof-of-work reports/month, and a free Folio Surveyor sample (up to 50 responses).
Scholar also includes 5 citation or claim checks a month, run when you ask: check a draft's citations against your library, or its claims against your sources. Adding a source by link, DOI, ISBN or PDF does not use any of these allowances.
Fellow: $9.99/mo (or $99/year). Unlocks the integrity toolkit: 20 citation and claim checks a day, with claims checked as you write (each sentence checked counts toward the 20), daily Document Audit, Research Radar with email digests, 3 Discovery Agents, literature discovery and synthesis, unlimited authorship certificates & proof-of-work reports, daily AI (Research & start, Scholar AI, proofreading), version history (browse, compare and restore the last 50 versions of each document), collaboration (invite people to view, comment on, or edit your document), and Folio Surveyor with up to 200 responses and AI analysis.
Chair: $25/mo (or $250/year). Everything in Fellow, with at least twice Fellow's AI limits, unlimited proofreading, 10 Discovery Agents with Deep Scan and briefing audio, Scholar AI as an advisor in the chat when you co-edit, Folio Surveyor with no cap per study (each survey link takes up to 1,000 responses) and AI analysis, and direct founder support.
The small "Made with Folio" mark on exported figures and documents is on for Scholar and Fellow. On Chair it is off by default, and you can switch it back on in Studio, the editor's chart dialog and the free diagram tools.
Annual billing saves about 17% versus paying monthly.
What "free" really means
Free is a genuine workspace, not a locked demo: you can write, manage a full library, and cite without limits. Every plan keeps a writing record of each document (the saved versions behind your authorship report); Fellow and Chair can also browse, compare and restore those versions. Folio's integrity toolkit has three layers:
- Attested writing (a timestamped record of how you wrote): in early access. It is rolling out gradually to a limited group of accounts, is not on every account yet, and no plan grants it today.
- Authorship certificates & proof-of-work reports: 3/month free on Scholar, unlimited on Fellow and Chair.
- AI citation & claim checking: 5 checks a month on Scholar, run when you ask. Fellow and Chair check every day and check claims as you write. Document Audit is Fellow and Chair only.
What is reserved for paid plans is daily AI checking (and checking claims as you write), Document Audit, discovery, synthesis, Research Radar, sharing your documents with collaborators, version history, and Folio Surveyor's higher response caps and AI analysis. If you hit a monthly AI limit on the free plan, you will see an upgrade prompt explaining exactly what you have used.
You can see every allowance, and how much of it you have used, in Account settings → Plan and billing.
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 settings → Plan and billing → Manage subscription. From there you can:
- Update payment method.
- Change plan or billing cycle in the billing portal, on the same subscription. Billing is handled by our payment provider (LemonSqueezy), so the portal is theirs.
- Cancel subscription. You keep your plan until the end of the period you have already paid for, then move to the free Scholar plan. Your documents and sources are never deleted.
- Resume subscription, any time before a cancellation takes effect.
Refunds
We offer a full refund within 7 days of your first paid charge; see our Refund Policy for the details. If a free or discounted period came first (a referral reward, a retention offer, a promo code, or a beta credit), that $0 period doesn't start or count against the 7-day window. It opens on the date you're first actually charged.
Referral rewards: give a month, get a month
Invite a colleague and you can both come out ahead, with no support ticket: it just runs.
Your invite link lives under Account settings → Invite colleagues (you'll also see it offered on your dashboard, and right after you publish an Integrity Certificate). Copy it and send it to a colleague:
- They get their first month of Fellow free when they sign up through your link.
- You get a free month too once they subscribe to a paid plan. If you're already on a paid plan, the month is banked and starts automatically when your current paid period ends, so it never gets lost.
The same section shows how many colleagues have joined, how many have subscribed, and how many free months you've banked.