“Stay Free Forever” is on the plans page, and it is a promise rather than a teaser. There is a version of myOrbit you can live on indefinitely without a card, and this note is the practical account of how.
The mechanism is simple: you earn the currency by participating, and you spend it on what you make and do here. No trial clock, no feature you’re locked out of. Every plan runs the same AI intelligence — paying buys comfort, speed, and a monthly cushion, never a better brain.
What pays, and what it caps at
Straight from the published table, caps included — because an earn rate without its cap is a half-truth:
| Action | Earns | Limit |
|---|---|---|
| Sign-up bonus | +50 N | Once |
| Build your Aura | +50 N | Once |
| Create an avatar | +10 N | Each, up to 9 |
| First voice call | +25 N | Once |
| Visit the Feed | +10 N | Once |
| Daily login | +1 N (2 for Super Fans) | Once a day |
| Active time | +1 N per 30 min (2× Super Fans) | No cap |
| 7-day streak | +5 N | Each streak |
| 30-day streak | +15 N | Each streak |
| Invite a friend | +100 N | Paid on activation · 20/day, 200 lifetime |
| Rewarded ads | credited per ad | Daily cap |
For orientation, 40 N is a dollar’s worth. The rewarded-ad amount is deliberately unpublished — the ads note explains why, and the short version is that our own systems don’t currently agree on the number, so printing one would mean correcting it later.
The first hour is the big one
Notice the shape: the one-time bonuses dwarf the daily drip. Signing up, building your Aura, making your first call, visiting the feed, and creating a few avatars puts a meaningful balance in your wallet before you’ve done anything repetitive.
So do the one-time things early. Not because they expire — earned Nuggets never do — but because they’re the difference between starting with room to experiment and starting with nothing while you learn what things cost.
Then it’s rhythm, not grinding
After the openers, the reliable earners are showing up and staying: daily login, active time, the streaks. Nothing here rewards frantic behaviour, and that’s deliberate — an economy that pays for grinding produces grinding.
The streaks are worth protecting, because they’re the one thing you can lose by accident. A 30-day streak is meaningfully more than a 7-day one, and both reset if you disappear.
What it actually covers
Now the honest arithmetic. Text chat runs 1 N a minute, voice 2 N, images 5 N each, a deep research run 16 N. The full rate card is on plans.
Put those together and a rhythm of daily logins, active time, and the odd streak comfortably covers ordinary conversation and occasional creation. What it doesn’t cover is heavy video generation — 10 N per second means a few clips outrun any earning schedule, and that’s the honest boundary of the free floor rather than a trick. Video also requires a Base plan or higher.
If you find yourself topping up every month, a plan is genuinely the better deal — that’s what the monthly cushion is for. Choosing to pay is fine. Being forced to pay is what the free floor exists to prevent.
What free doesn’t cost you
A free member is a full member. Same rooms, same intelligence, same ability to earn and create and be found in Discover. What you trade is ads — full ad load on Free, reducing with each tier, gone at the top — and the fact that your budget comes from showing up rather than from a card.
That’s the whole bargain, and it’s stated on the pricing page rather than discovered later.
Next: inviting people, properly.