Pricing
All the materials are free, forever.
The 136 tutorials, articles, community projects, simulator, viewer, and CAD will always be free — no plans to ever paywall them. To keep the site running and ship more, the Subscriber plan ($49/mo) unlocks the paid project courses, adds a few quality-of-life perks, and helps fund continued development. Cancel anytime.
AI features are bring-your-own-key in every tier — your provider key stays in your browser, never on our servers.
Free
The materials. Always free.
$0
- All 136 tutorial lessons
- All articles + community projects
- Browser simulator, viewer, CAD
- AI features — bring your own provider key
- STL export + URDF export
- Community Discord
- Free preview of every paid course
Most popular
Subscriber
Unlock the project courses + keep the site running.
$49 / month
- Everything in Free
- All paid project courses, present and future
- Support the project + keep the lights on
- Cloud-save your CAD scenes across devices
- STEP export (engineering-grade ISO 10303)
- Subscriber badge on your profile
- Cancel anytime
All paid plans renew automatically. Cancel anytime from your billing portal.
Pricing FAQ
- If the 136 tutorials are free, why pay $49/mo for courses?
- Tutorials answer questions. Courses build robots. Tutorials are encyclopedia entries — read in any order, no hardware required, no destination. Courses are project-based guides built around a specific kit you buy; you start at lesson 1 and finish with a working robot. They include the debug stories, gotchas, narrative, and (over time) video walkthroughs that free tutorials don't. Free preview lessons let you try the style before subscribing.
- Why is AI “bring your own key”?
- Two reasons. (1) Honesty about cost: LLM bills are volatile and we'd rather you pay your provider directly than have us markup their pricing. (2) Liability: we don't want to hold your key. It stays in your browser, gets passed to the provider through us without being logged or stored. See the privacy page for the full chain of custody.
- What's actually in the Subscriber plan?
- Every paid course we ship — present and future — included for $49/mo. New courses go straight into your library. Also: cloud-save for your CAD scenes (synced across devices), STEP export for engineering-grade CAD output, and a subscriber badge on your profile. Free users still get all 136 tutorials, the simulator, viewer, CAD, and a free preview of every paid course.
- How many paid courses are there?
- One at launch: From Blink to Bot — ESP32-S3 robotics with the Freenove Starter Kit.Three free preview lessons, seven paid lessons. More courses are in production — they'll appear in your subscriber library automatically.
- Can I cancel anytime?
- Yes. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your billing period; you keep Member/Studio access until then.
- Do you offer student or open-source discounts?
- Yes — email hi@robotforge.org with proof and we'll send you a discount code.
- Where does my payment go?
- Stripe processes the payment; we never see your card number. Your money funds hosting, content production, and creator revenue share. No advertising, no email resale.