Astrolium has four Practice tiers — Free ($0), Pro ($11/mo or $110/yr), Adept ($29/mo or $290/yr), and Master ($79/mo or $790/yr) — plus a separate Personal mode ($12/mo, billed monthly) for individuals reading only their own chart. Which Practice tier you should be on this month depends less on how professional you feel and more on three numbers: how many clients you actually track, whether you need roster-wide scanning or horary/electional tools, and how much of your interpretation drafting time the AI can credibly recover. I have spent stretches on every tier: Free for the first six weeks of last year, Pro through summer, Adept since autumn, and a one-month detour through Master while building out a small team. What follows is the math at each step. Current numbers and the BYOK details live on the pricing page, and the features index covers what each tier opens.
The point of this post is not to push you up the ladder. There are practitioners I know who should stay on Free indefinitely, and one teacher I introduced to Astrolium who has been happily on Pro at $11 for eight months because her active roster stays under 25 clients. The right tier is the one whose cap you bump into more than twice a month. Below that, you are paying for headroom you do not use.
What Free actually gets you
Five client profiles is more generous than it sounds for somebody not yet billing for sessions. Each profile carries the natal chart, the chart graphic, the position tables, the aspect grid, and any session notes you type. The Swiss Ephemeris engine that powers Master also powers Free; there is no degraded-precision mode for non-paying users. You get all 23 house systems (including Placidus, Whole Sign, Equal, Koch, Porphyry, Regiomontanus, Campanus, Alcabitius, and Morinus), the current sky and a transit biwheel with full date navigation, Numerology, PNG chart exports, unmetered watermarked chart PDF exports, and Solar Fire import for migrating an existing library.
What Free does not get is AI credits (though a one-time $9 credit pack works on any tier, Free included), Report Studio, unwatermarked PDFs, relational charts (synastry, composite, Davison), returns, progressions, primary directions, or Zodiacal Releasing. It is a natal-and-transit chart workspace. Drag in your birth data, run the chart, scrub transits across dates, take notes, and export watermarked chart PDFs. If your work fits that shape, Free is the right product. Many self-study astrologers and early-career practitioners stay here for nine months or longer.
The 5-slot cap is on saved active profiles, not on chart computations. You can run an unlimited number of one-off natal charts for friends, students, or research without ever using a slot. Delete a profile and the slot frees up. The cap bites only when you want to track more than five people over time and keep their notes persisted.
Pro at $11: the first paid step
Pro ($11/month or $110/year) turns the workspace into a complete single-practitioner reading tool. The client cap moves from 5 to 25, the watermark comes off your chart PDFs, and Report Studio unlocks with unwatermarked PDF and DOCX exports in 7 languages (English, Spanish, German, French, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, and Ukrainian). You also get 50 AI credits per month for Sky and Report Studio, plus a 100 MB Knowledge Base so the AI grounds its drafts in your own uploaded notes and rules.
On the calculation side, Pro unlocks the core relational, predictive, and multi-system modules: synastry, composite, and Davison charts; solar and lunar returns; secondary progressions, solar arc, and primary directions; annual profections, Firdaria, and Zodiacal Releasing (L1–L2); birth-time rectification; astrocartography; Jyotish; and Human Design.
The relevant question at $11 is not "is the AI good." It is "have I outgrown 5 clients, and do I need synastry, returns, predictive timing, or unwatermarked reports." If you only cast natal and transit charts for a handful of people and don't mind a watermark on PDF exports, Free covers you. Once you start delivering client-facing reports, running solar returns or synastry, or tracking up to 25 active clients, Pro pays for itself in roughly half a session.
The honest case for Pro is straightforward: you are running a real reading practice with between 6 and 25 active clients, and you want the full relational and predictive technique stack plus Report Studio without paying for studio-scale quotas.
Adept at $29: the consultation workhorse
Adept ($29/month or $290/year) removes the client ceiling and adds the specialized practitioner and roster-wide tools. Client profiles become unlimited, monthly AI credits climb from 50 to 300, and your Knowledge Base expands tenfold from 100 MB to 1 GB. On the technique side, Adept unlocks Horary, Electional Search, and the Kabbalah Tree of Life. On thebranding side, Adept puts your custom logo, color palette, and footer on the reports and share links your clients see.
Just as importantly, Transit Scanner and Transit Alerts unlock on Adept, which is the combination that quietly justifies the tier in most working practices. Transit Scanner lets you ask "show me every client with Saturn opposite their natal Sun this month" and get back a short list, while Transit Alerts notify you when configured transits go exact across your roster. The scanner replaces the manual workflow of clicking through twenty-plus profiles every Sunday evening, and at twenty-five profiles it pays for the tier in time alone before any other feature.
Adept also unlocks BYOK (Bring Your Own Key). If you already have an OpenAI, Anthropic, or OpenRouter API key, you can connect it in settings so AI requests route through your own provider account. Connecting your own key removes the in-app monthly credit cap and adds nothing to your Astrolium invoice. Most power users I know on Adept enable BYOK once they cross 300 AI credits in a busy month and want the ceiling out of the picture.
The volume signal for Adept is clear: the moment you pass 25 clients, need Horary or Electional Search, want custom logo/palette branding on your reports, or want Transit Scanner and Alerts watching your roster automatically, Adept is your tier.
Master at $79: studio and brand
Master ($79/month or $790/year) is built for studios, mentors, and astrologers who have outgrown the single-practitioner shape. It includes 3 team seats on a shared client roster, 1,000 AI credits per month (or unmetered with BYOK), and a 5 GB Knowledge Base. Full white-label branding removes the "Made with Astrolium" mark completely, supports up to 3 distinct brand profiles, and lets you serve shared charts and reports from a custom domain (charts.yourpractice.com).
For high-volume practices, Master also adds Scanner Pro, Batch Calculation across your roster, and the Weekly Digest — an automated Monday brief covering every client with significant transits or timing activations that week, which is the closest thing astrology has to an executive CRM digest.
The volume signal for Master is the team seat and full white-label. If at least one other person works alongside you on your client roster, or if you run multiple brand identities and want a custom domain with zero Astrolium branding, Master is the right tier.
Feature matrix
| Feature | Free ($0) | Pro ($11/mo) | Adept ($29/mo) | Master ($79/mo) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Client profiles | 5 | 25 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| House systems | All 23 | All 23 | All 23 | All 23 |
| Natal + transit biwheel & Numerology | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Chart PDF export | Unmetered (watermarked) | Unmetered (unwatermarked) | Custom logo & palette | Full white-label (up to 3 brands) |
| Report Studio (PDF & DOCX, 7 languages) | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| AI credits / mo | — | 50 | 300 | 1,000 |
| Knowledge Base storage | — | 100 MB | 1 GB | 5 GB |
| Synastry, composite, Davison & returns | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Progressions, solar arc, primary directions, ZR (L1–L2) | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Astrocartography, Jyotish & Human Design | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Horary, Electional Search & Tree of Life | — | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Transit Scanner & Transit Alerts | — | — | ✓ | ✓ (Scanner Pro) |
| BYOK (OpenAI / Anthropic / OpenRouter) | — | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Team seats | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 |
| Weekly Digest, Batch Calculation & custom domain | — | — | — | ✓ |
Volume thresholds, concretely
Here is the version I use when newer practitioners ask me. Run the tier you are on for 30 days. Count three things: how many times you hit the client cap, which chart or timing techniques you reached for, and how many hours you spent on prep work that Report Studio and Sky could have drafted for you. The cap signal is the dominant one. Once you bump against it twice in a single month, the upgrade has already happened in your head.
Up to five tracked clients, natal and transit work only. Stay on Free. All 23 house systems, full transit date navigation, and unmetered watermarked chart PDFs are already there. Once you need unwatermarked reports, synastry, returns, or predictive timing (progressions, primary directions, Zodiacal Releasing), that is the Pro signal.
Six to twenty-five active clients, full relational and predictive work. Pro at $11/month ($110/year) is built for you. Twenty-five client slots, 50 AI credits, a 100 MB Knowledge Base, Report Studio across 7 languages, and the full synastry/returns/timing/astrocartography/Jyotish/Human Design stack cover an active solo practice cleanly.
More than twenty-five clients, or a practice using Horary, Electional, or Transit Scanner. Adept at $29/month ($290/year). Unlimited client profiles, 300 AI credits, a 1 GB Knowledge Base, custom logo and palette branding, plus Transit Scanner and Transit Alerts pay for the tier as soon as you manage a growing roster.
Studio of two-plus people, or a practice requiring full white-label and a custom domain. Master at $79/month ($790/year). Three seats on a shared roster, 1,000 AI credits, a 5 GB Knowledge Base, up to 3 white-label brand profiles with custom domain support, Weekly Digest, and Batch Calculation.
A note on BYOK
BYOK unlocks at Adept ($29/mo) and Master ($79/mo). If you have an API key from OpenAI, Anthropic, or OpenRouter, plugging it into Astrolium routes your AI prompts through your own provider account. You pay the provider directly for the tokens you consume, Astrolium adds nothing to your invoice for BYOK, and the in-app monthly credit cap disappears. For practitioners who live in Sky and Report Studio all day (drafting interpretation briefs, querying a 1 GB or 5 GB Knowledge Base), BYOK is the cleanest path to "the AI ceiling never gets in the way."
For practitioners who use the AI at a normal consultation pace, the included quotas at each tier (50 credits on Pro, 300 on Adept, 1,000 on Master) are plenty, and a $9 one-time top-up pack is always available on any tier if you just have a seasonal spike.
What I would have done differently
I stayed on Free for 6 weeks longer than I should have. The reason was not the price, it was the friction of switching billing on a card I share with my partner. By week four I had hit the 5-client cap twice, exported and deleted profiles to free up slots, and wished I had Report Studio and solar returns right in the workspace. Looking back, the friction in those six weeks cost me hours of billable prep against an $11/month Pro subscription (covered by a 14-day money-back guarantee on your first monthly or annual plan). Free is great when it fits. When you start working around it, the upgrade has already happened in your head; the only thing left is the credit card.
The clearest signal that it is time to step up is repetition. The same workaround, the same export-and-delete cycle, three weeks in a row. That is your unconscious telling you what the next tier is for. Pay it. Use the recovered attention on actual chart work.
If you are coming from another tool, the upgrade math gets even simpler. See migrating from Solar Fire to Astrolium for the import walkthrough, or the comparison hub for the broader picture against every major competitor.
