Costs and third-party services
your accounts, your bills.
Kiln itself has no subscription and no usage fee: you bought the code, and it runs on your server. The services it connects to are your own accounts, and each one bills you directly. Only the server is required; everything else is optional and off until you add a key.
01Overview
| Service | Needed for | Required? | Who pays |
|---|---|---|---|
| A server (VPS) and a domain | Running Kiln, the builder address, hosted sites | Yes | You, to your hosting company and domain registrar |
| Anthropic, OpenAI, OpenRouter or an OpenAI-compatible provider (Gemini, Groq, Mistral…) | AI planning, writing, rewriting, chat, blog drafts, translating | No (drafts work without it) | You, per use, to the provider. A local Ollama costs only your own hardware. |
| OpenAI Images | AI-generated pictures | No | You, per image, to OpenAI |
| Pexels | Stock photos | No | Free (your own free key) |
| Cloudflare Workers | Publishing sites to Cloudflare | No | Free tier; above its limits, you pay Cloudflare |
| Stripe | Selling plans and credit packs | No | Stripe takes its fee from each payment |
| Resend | Invite, review and form e-mails | No | Free tier; above it, you pay Resend |
| Bunny Fonts | Web fonts on published sites | No | Free |
| Caddy, Let's Encrypt | HTTPS certificates | Recommended | Free |
| Cal.com, Calendly | Booking section | No | The site owner, to the booking service |
| YouTube, Vimeo | Video section | No | The site owner's own channel or account |
| Google Maps | Location section with a map | No | Free embed, no API key |
| Google Analytics, Tag Manager, Plausible, Meta Pixel | Analytics on published sites | No | The site owner, to the provider (Plausible is a paid service) |
| Zapier, Make, n8n or a CRM | Form webhooks | No | The site owner, to that service |
Above any free tier, the cost is yours, never Kiln's or the author's.
02Overview
| Service | Needed for | Required? | Who pays |
|---|---|---|---|
| A server (VPS) and a domain | Running Kiln, the builder address, hosted sites | Yes | You, to your hosting company and domain registrar |
| Anthropic, OpenAI, OpenRouter or an OpenAI-compatible provider (Gemini, Groq, Mistral…) | AI planning, writing, rewriting, chat, blog drafts, translating | No (drafts work without it) | You, per use, to the provider. A local Ollama costs only your own hardware. |
| OpenAI Images | AI-generated pictures | No | You, per image, to OpenAI |
| Pexels | Stock photos | No | Free (your own free key) |
| Cloudflare Workers | Publishing sites to Cloudflare | No | Free tier; above its limits, you pay Cloudflare |
| Stripe | Selling plans and credit packs | No | Stripe takes its fee from each payment |
| Resend | Invite, review and form e-mails | No | Free tier; above it, you pay Resend |
| Bunny Fonts | Web fonts on published sites | No | Free |
| Caddy, Let's Encrypt | HTTPS certificates | Recommended | Free |
| Cal.com, Calendly | Booking section | No | The site owner, to the booking service |
| YouTube, Vimeo | Video section | No | The site owner's own channel or account |
| Google Maps | Location section with a map | No | Free embed, no API key |
| Google Analytics, Tag Manager, Plausible, Meta Pixel | Analytics on published sites | No | The site owner, to the provider (Plausible is a paid service) |
| Zapier, Make, n8n or a CRM | Form webhooks | No | The site owner, to that service |
Above any free tier, the cost is yours, never Kiln's or the author's.
03Server
Kiln needs about 1 GB of memory. A small Linux VPS is enough for an agency's sites; the database is a file and the images are on disk. Disk use grows with uploaded and generated images (each up to 8 MB). Published sites on the built-in hosting are served by the same server, so traffic to client sites uses your server's bandwidth.
04AI text providers
Every AI action is one or more calls to the provider you choose, billed by the provider per token (input and output). What one site costs depends on the model, the effort setting, the number of pages and languages.
- Planning a site is one call; each page is one call; each section rewrite, chat request and blog draft is one call; translation is one call per page and language.
- Smaller models (
claude-sonnet-5-5,claude-haiku-5-5) cost less per token thanclaude-opus-5-5. Lower effort uses fewer tokens. - The console's AI usage page lists the input and output tokens of every call, so you can compare them with the provider's prices and set your credit prices to cover them.
- A workspace that brings its own AI key pays its own text AI usage.
05AI images
With AI → Images set to AI images, or when a user clicks Generate with AI, each image is one call to OpenAI's image API (default model gpt-image-1, size 1536×1024), billed per image by OpenAI. At most 6 images are generated automatically per new site. Each also costs the workspace credits.image credits.
The default image option, abstract artwork in the site's colours, is drawn by Kiln and costs nothing.
06Pexels
The Pexels API is free with your own key. It has request limits; a new site uses up to 16 searches. Photos are downloaded to your server, so they keep working even if Pexels removes them.
07Cloudflare
Publishing to Cloudflare uses Workers with static assets in your Cloudflare account. The free plan has limits, for example on the number of Workers per account and on requests that run Worker code; Kiln creates one Worker per published site. Check Cloudflare's Workers pricing and limits pages. Above the free limits you pay Cloudflare. Domains you register through Cloudflare are billed by Cloudflare.
08Stripe
Stripe charges a fee per successful payment and may charge for some features. The fees are taken from each payment before it reaches your bank. Kiln's revenue screen shows the amounts the clients paid, before Stripe's fees.
09Resend
Resend sends Kiln's e-mails (invites, password resets, review decisions, form messages). It has a free tier with a daily and monthly limit. You need a domain verified in Resend for the sender address.
10Bunny Fonts
Published sites load their web fonts from Bunny Fonts (fonts.bunny.net), a free, GDPR-friendly font service. Turn web fonts off per site in the Theme tab to use system fonts only.
11Services your clients bring
The booking, video, map, analytics and webhook features use the site owner's own accounts. Kiln holds no key for them and adds no fee. The client signs up with Cal.com or Calendly, uploads videos to their own YouTube or Vimeo channel, creates their own Google Analytics, Tag Manager, Plausible or Meta account, and pays those services directly where they charge. The map uses Google's public embed and needs no Google account or key. These services load in the visitor's browser only when the visitor clicks (maps, booking, video) or, with the consent banner on, after the visitor accepts (Google Analytics, Tag Manager, Meta Pixel). Check each provider's terms and privacy rules for your client's country.
12What your clients pay
Clients pay you, through Stripe, for the plans and credit packs you define. You decide the prices. Kiln does not suggest prices and makes no promise about what you will earn.