Blog · August 10, 2026

What's new: a free plan, paid plans, and your own plugins

Last time it was chopped breaks, one-press undo, and beats that fit your kit, and renaming a session full of Audio 1 since. Here’s the rest.

The free plan, and paid plans

Updated 2026-08-17: this post originally announced a 14-day trial. The clock is gone and the numbers below are the current ones.

Dawbrain has paid plans now, and a free plan underneath them that does not expire. You start with 150 credits and no card: 20 for the month, plus 130 that never lapse. The monthly 20 are spent first, so the 130 last as long as it takes you to get through them, and you keep getting 20 every month either way.

Above that, Starter is $19 a month for 150 credits and Studio is $45 for 400. A credit is one step the assistant takes toward your request, not one message, so reading your session, writing the clip, then checking the result is three.

On a paid plan nothing cuts off mid-session. You keep working, extra credits are $0.15 each, and they land on your next invoice. The usage page shows what you’ve used and what you’ve accrued, so the invoice holds no surprises.

Your own plugins

Ask for Serum and you get Serum. The VST and AU plugins you have installed now show up in search next to Live’s own devices, and Dawbrain loads one onto a track by name. Until now it couldn’t see them at all: ask for a plugin you own and you were told it wasn’t installed.

It loads your plugin, it doesn’t turn its knobs (yet, we’re working on it). Once it’s on the track, the sound design is yours.

Ask about the whole arrangement

“What’s going on in the second half?” used to be a question worth avoiding. On a 41-track session, Dawbrain would sit there and eventually give up.

It now answers in a few seconds, across the whole set. Ask what’s playing in the drop, which tracks are empty past bar 64, or where the vocal actually stops, and you get an answer instead of a wait. Clip lengths read the way you see them on the timeline too, so a clip you’ve trimmed no longer comes back ending a bar or two from where it does.

Parts that sound played

A drum pattern is built from four layers: the kick, the backbeat (snare and clap), the timekeeping (hats, ride, percussion), and the accents (crash and phrase fill). Ask for the ones you want. “Kick and hats only” strips the same groove back for a quieter section, instead of switching to a genre that happens to be sparser.

Melodies are written from named figures rather than one generic shape: a bebop eighth run, a funk sixteenth riff, a blues call and response, a trap arp pluck. Name the one you want, or let the genre choose. Individual voices can push or pull against the grid, so the pocket is a decision rather than an accident.

There are two more genres to write in, psytrance and rumba guaguancó, and chop styles for neurofunk and halftime.

Install Dawbrain, point it at your messiest session, and email info@dawbrain.com with what breaks.