Accounts and pricing
Accounts are free for now as part of a costing test. Pricing may be introduced later, as explained on this page; nothing available here requires payment at this time.
Free accounts are offered as they are, as part of a test: they may change or pause, and your feedback is gratefully received — write to hello@tinglilab.com.
Free accounts, today
Free accounts with daily limits are open now (100 places to start, 18 or over).
The 100 free places are taken for now — they'll reopen when I raise the cap, and the founder offer applies to accounts made, and to anyone on the waitlist, by 31 December 2026. The free tone lab at tinglilab.org is always open.
Anyone 18 or over can make a free account on the lab's sign-in screen: type your email address, and the link the lab emails you opens the sign-up form, for a username and a password. One free account per address. Each day a free account can make:
- 3 clips, 1 text passage, and 1 conversation of up to 10 partner turns with its debrief;
- tone practice, dictation and writing on the HSK 1–3 words: unlimited.
There are 100 places to start. Every free account gets its whole allowance every day. Behind the allowances is a monthly ceiling for all free accounts together: it would stop new clips and conversations only if the month's spending reached it, and the lab would then say “Free accounts have used this month's allowance: new clips and conversations start again on the 1st (or sooner, if it's raised).” Tone practice, dictation and writing on the HSK words, and the clips you've already made, would still work.
A free account is yours on every device: your word bank, clips, drills, writing and conversations sync. Clips and the conversation partner use the fast AI model, under classroom rules; your voice recordings are never kept or uploaded; and you can delete the account yourself, at any time, in Settings.
Why free accounts exist
I'm offering free accounts while determining how many I can sustain on a limited budget, which imposes some limits on free daily usage. I hope to maintain some number of free accounts as long as TingliLab is going. I also want to find out whether people want more than the free limits allow, enough to pay for it. Every clip and conversation costs me money; the daily limits and a monthly ceiling keep that small while I find out. The larger cost is my time: I answer every query, and I keep improving the lab from what people tell me. In the end that matters more than the modest sums, and it is what decides whether a lab for many people can go on.
Changes to free accounts: I'll give at least 30 days' notice before free accounts lose anything they include now, or close. The notice goes on the sign-in screen and in the lab's Settings, and by email to every account with a confirmed address. Additions can come at any time. Reaching that monthly ceiling, and steps against abuse, aren't changes in this sense.
If I go ahead with a paid version
I'll say so here and in the lab at least 30 days before anything changes for free accounts. Whether free accounts continue after that, and with what limits, is part of that decision: I hope to keep some, but keeping them means an ongoing commitment of time and money that I can't promise now. What I can promise is the notice above, and the founder offer below.
What a paid version would add
No price is set, and nothing available here requires payment at this time; a paid version may follow if there is demand. This is what it would offer, so you know what the test is about:
- a larger allowance of clips, passages and conversations for your 30 days, with refills if you run out;
- no subscription, no auto-renewal, no card details stored: you buy 30 days when you like;
- your voice recordings kept if you choose, so you can listen back;
- the same conversation partner, with the fuller AI model as a choice, and clips written by the fuller model;
- tone practice, dictation and writing on the HSK 1–3 words stay unlimited, as they are at tinglilab.org for anyone.
How much larger the allowance is, and the price, get set together and published here before anything requires payment.
The founder offer
If a paid version does follow, anyone with a free account made by 23:59 AEDT, 31 December 2026 pays half the regular price for as long as they keep renewing. In detail:
- “Keeps renewing” means renewing within 60 days of the previous 30 days ending. A break of up to 60 days keeps the offer; a longer one ends it, and the regular price applies from then on.
- You can buy your first 30 days whenever you like, if and when paid accounts open; there is no deadline for that.
- Half price means half of the regular price at the time, whatever it is. If the regular price changes, founders still pay half of it.
- The regular price isn't set. It will be the one everyone else pays, published here before anything requires payment, so you'll know the number before you decide.
- Anyone on the waitlist by 31 December 2026 also qualifies.
Nothing available here requires payment at this time, and there is nothing to do now: a free account made in time, or a place on the waitlist by then, is what holds the offer.
Prefer no account at all?
The free tone lab at tinglilab.org has no limits and nothing to sign up for: tone practice with the judge, HSK 1–3 dictation and handwriting, on your own device. What's in it.