Try it for free. Pay when it's earning its keep.

Yoshi's pricing follows one rule: you should see real value before you pay. You can build a complete site and see it live for free; you pay when you want it on your own domain, the badge gone, and the caretaking turned on.

Numbers below are directional, not final — pricing is an open decision (cycle 37). This page exists to design the shape of the offer and to be honest about what's free vs paid.

The shape of the offer

	Free	Pro (directional)	Studio (builders/agencies)
Build a full site	✅	✅	✅ many
Live at *.yoshi.site	✅	✅	✅
All the pages, individuation, speed, base SEO	✅	✅	✅
Dashboard + scores (view)	✅	✅ full + trends	✅ portfolio
Rebuilds / re-scores / x-rays	metered	generous	generous
"Built with Yoshi" badge	shown	removed	removed
Your own domain	—	✅	✅ per client
Live edits + iterative rebuild	—	✅	✅
Native analytics	—	✅	✅
Scoring / x-ray API + deep widgets	—	✅	✅
Yoshi tends the site	—	✅	✅
Manage many sites · white-label	—	—	✅
Indicative price	$0	~$49–99 entry	usage / per-site

status: planned — tiers + exact prices are cycle 37 (grounded in competitor rates + our real cost-at-scale), and the auth/accounts/API gating is cycle 38.

How the gating actually works (it's not a wall)

Most of what makes a Yoshi site great is standard — free for everyone: the full page depth, the individuation, the speed, the base SEO, a live address, and a look at your dashboard. We don't cripple the product to sell it back to you. Three things sit above the line:

1. The pay gate is your own domain. Confirmed (Curtis s01-b6ac70): connecting yourbusiness.com is the clean, universal "now it's mine, now I'll pay" moment. It's also the natural place to unlock the rest of the paid value, because a custom-domain user is a committed user.
2. Premium capabilities unlock with paid — the things that make a site alive and measured: live edits + iterative rebuild (change anything, regenerate just what's affected), native analytics (our own, built-in — not a Google-Analytics paste-in), the scoring + x-ray tools as a real API + deep dashboard widgets, and Yoshi tending the site for you. Many of these are proven already on our first client (Arzadon) and generalize to every tenant.
3. Resource-heavy actions are metered, not removed, on free. Rebuilds and frequent re-scoring/x-rays cost real compute, so free gets a fair quota (enough to feel the value), and paid gets generous headroom. You're never blocked from the capability — just asked to upgrade when you lean on the expensive ones a lot.

The principle: standard is free and genuinely good; you pay for your domain, for aliveness + measurement, and for heavy usage — never for the basic right to a good site.

What's genuinely free

The free tier isn't a crippled demo. You get the whole site — all the pages, the real individuation, the speed and SEO — live on a Yoshi address, indefinitely. We'd rather have a live site of yours out in the world (carrying a tasteful badge) than wall off the thing that proves Yoshi works.

For builders & agencies — the Studio

If your business is making sites, Yoshi is your factory. Stand up many client sites, manage them from one portfolio dashboard, put them on your clients' domains, and run the whole thing under your own brand. Pricing here is about volume + white-label, not per-seat. status: planned (Studio = cycle 2 + tier-2 addressing).

For developers — the API

Yoshi's capabilities are also an API (the performance audit endpoint is the first one live). Build Yoshi into your own tools, with keys, tiered limits, and clear docs. status: live for the perf API; the broader platform API + account system is cycle 38. (See the technical docs for the API reference.)

🌳 Open questions (the inquisitive seam)

• What's the upgrade trigger? RESOLVED (Curtis s01-b6ac70): own-domain is the pay gate. Connecting your own domain is the headline upgrade, and it unlocks the alive/measured tier (live edits, iterative rebuild, native analytics, scoring/x-ray API + deep widgets, caretaking). Cross-ref 05, 37; feature→cycle map in cycle 37.
• What's the free metered quota, exactly? How many rebuilds / re-scores / x-rays per month feels generous-but-bounded — enough to fall in love, not enough to bleed compute? Needs the real cost curve. Cycle 37 cost-at-scale + cycle 38 tier limits.
• Per-site vs subscription. Trades often want one site, once — a subscription can feel wrong for them, while builders want volume pricing. Do we offer a one-time "own this site" alongside a subscription for the living/caretaking value? Leaning: subscription for alive, because the value is ongoing — but be honest that a frozen site needs less. Big pricing fork; cycle 37.
• How do we price the AI cost honestly? Generation + caretaking have real compute cost that scales with usage. Flat tiers are simple but risky at the heavy end; usage pricing is fair but scary to a small owner. Leaning: flat tiers with generous-but-bounded limits, usage only at the builder scale. Cross-ref cycle 37 cost-at-scale, cloudflare.md.
• The badge as growth engine. If the free tier is a real, live, good site with a tasteful mark, every free user markets Yoshi. How much of the funnel do we bet on that vs paid acquisition? Cross-ref 05.
• Referrals + the builder flywheel. Builders who succeed bring more builders. Is there a referral / revenue-share that makes Yoshi spread through the agency world on its own? Cross-ref cycle 37 (D16 referral).