Free vs Pro

Hexcalibur has a free tier with no time limit, a Pro subscription (monthly or annual), and a one-time lifetime purchase. This page covers what each tier includes and where the gates fall.

What’s on the free tier

Free is a real tier, not a trial. You can paint, save, and export forever without paying.

The free tier includes:

1 pack with up to 8 assets
Up to 5 animation frames and 1 tag per asset - enough for a classic 4-6 frame walk cycle or idle loop
The full editor: every tool, layer, palette feature, blend mode, and import path
The single-cube 3D preview
Local autosave to your browser
Per-asset PNG export in any engine
Per-layer export (single layer or any selection of layers, bundled as a .zip)
Animated GIF export for multi-frame assets
All sprite, tile, tilemap, UI, and icon-set workflows, including importing a tileset (the whole sheet is one asset) and editing its tiles, or drawing your own tileset from a blank grid with New Tileset
Painting with a terrain - the autotile brush keeps working on any plan, even though generating one is Pro

If you’re using Hexcalibur for hobby pixel-art work or trying it out before committing, the free tier is genuinely complete for that use case.

What Pro adds

Pro is for users who hit the free-tier limits or who want the power-user features that target voxel-game workflows. Pro adds:

Unlimited packs and assets
Unlimited animation frames and tags per asset
Cloud sync - your packs save to the cloud automatically and reload on any device you sign in to
Multi-shape 3D preview - see your texture as an L-stack of cubes, not just a single cube. Edge-tiling, corner geometry, and ambient-occlusion-like shading all become visible in context
Stair and slab derivation - generate Minecraft stair and slab textures from a parent block with one click
Make Seamless - convert any texture into a seamlessly tiling version with one click, with no blur and no new colors (see Make seamless). Tiled mode and wrap-around painting stay free for hand-tuning seams
Terrain generation - draw two tiles and Hexcalibur composes a complete terrain, ready to paint as ground that fixes its own edges (see Generate terrain). Painting with a terrain stays free
Palette scheme generator - build palettes from color-theory schemes (monochromatic, complementary, analogous, and more), with pixel-art ramps and a lock-and-regenerate workflow, in the Palette Manager
Palette library sync - your saved palette library follows you across devices, alongside your packs
Multi-asset bundle export - select two or more assets in the pack and export them together as one engine-formatted bundle
Pack-scope export - export a whole pack as one engine-formatted bundle (Minecraft Java resource pack, Bedrock pack, Tiled tileset with TSX, generic atlas)
All current and future engine presets at the bundle level
Animated APNG and sprite-sheet exports - on the free tier, animated exports are limited to GIF; Pro unlocks the lossless APNG path and the sprite-sheet format that Phaser, Unity, Godot, and Three.js read directly
Engine-native animated textures - Minecraft Java .mcmeta with frametime and optional interpolation, and Bedrock flipbook, so an animated block texture drops straight into the game

Per-asset and per-layer PNG export stay free. The Pro export gates are about bundling assets together for an engine, not about whether you can get pixels out of the editor.

Pricing shape

Pro monthly: subscribe and cancel any time
Pro annual: the same set of features at a discount
Lifetime: a one-time purchase that includes every current and future Pro feature, forever

Lifetime users on a previous monthly or annual subscription can upgrade - Hexcalibur will cancel the recurring subscription automatically when the lifetime order lands.

For current pricing, see hexcalibur.axidus.io or your account’s billing page.

What happens when you reach a Pro feature

You’ll only see Pro prompts when you actually try to use something Pro-only. There are no banners or upsell pop-ups while you’re working:

Try to create a 2nd pack → a small modal explains the limit and offers the upgrade
Try to add a 6th frame or a 2nd tag to an asset → the same modal explains the animation cap
Pick L-stack in the 3D preview’s shape menu → the row carries a PRO badge and opens the upgrade modal
Open the Export dialog on a multi-asset selection or whole pack → the scope card shows a PRO badge and an Upgrade button

You can always dismiss the modal and keep working on the free tier - nothing you’ve made is locked away.

What happens if a subscription lapses

Cloud-synced packs stay readable. New cloud writes stop, the shape-mode selector falls back to single-cube only, and the pack-scope export option becomes gated again. Local autosave keeps working. Nothing you’ve already painted is lost.

When you re-subscribe, cloud sync resumes from where it left off.