What AI PCB design costs,
and what happens at the limit
The editor is free, and Sakura, the AI agent, starts on Pro at $20 a month. When its allowance runs out you can move to Ultra or pay per credit, and which one costs less depends on how much you use.
How much does AI PCB design cost in Cherry Blossom?
Designing a board by hand costs nothing. The Free plan is the whole editor: schematic, PCB layout, routing, checks and every export, with your projects saved to your account. Sakura, the AI agent, starts with Pro at $20 a month, which includes 600 AI actions a day and 4M credits a month. Ultra is $140 a month for 8 times that, plus Sakura 2 High.
Plans and their AI limits
| Plan | Price | AI | AI actions a day | Credits a month | Pay-as-you-go |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Your own AI through MCP | None | None | No |
| Pro | $20 a month, or $200 a year | Sakura, and your own AI through MCP | 600 | 4M | $5 per 1M credits |
| Ultra | $140 a month, or $1,350 a year | Sakura, including Sakura 2 High, and your own AI through MCP | 4,800 | 32M | $5 per 1M credits |
Monthly and yearly billing give the same limits. The pricing page compares every feature by plan.
What is a credit, and what is an AI action?
Two limits apply to Sakura: AI actions per day, and credits per month. Everything else in the editor has no meter.
An AI action
One call to the model. A single message to Sakura usually makes several, one for each round of tools it runs: find a part, read its data, place it, check the result. The daily limit counts these.
A credit
A measure of how much the model reads and writes. What the model has already read earlier in a conversation counts at 10%, so more work on the same board costs less than starting again. Sakura 2 High uses 4× the credits of Sakura 2 Base for the same work. A credit costs the same on every model.
Never metered
Nothing you do by hand uses credits: editing, Checks, Tidy, the free Clean up, the autorouter, sharing and every export. Your own AI through MCP doesn’t either, since it runs on your subscription.
What happens when you hit your AI limit?
The editor keeps working, and only Sakura stops. Its panel shows “You’ve reached your plan’s AI limit” and offers a way past it. On Pro that is Upgrade to Ultra for a larger allowance, or Turn on pay-as-you-go to keep going and pay only for what you use past it. On Ultra it is pay-as-you-go. If pay-as-you-go is already on and its monthly limit is spent too, the button reads Raise limit. Free doesn’t include Sakura, so its panel offers Pro, or your own AI through MCP.
There is also a short per-minute limit against runaway loops, the same on every plan. Pay-as-you-go doesn’t lift it, and it clears within the minute. Once a Pro account has used its day or its month, its Usage page shows the same choice in a card called Need more AI?, beside the pay-as-you-go switch.
How does pay-as-you-go work?
Pay-as-you-go keeps Sakura working on Pro and Ultra past the included credits and daily actions, at $5 per 1M credits. It is off until you turn it on, it is added to your invoice at the end of each month, and it stops at a monthly limit you choose.
- Open the Usage page in your account and click Turn on pay-as-you-go. The sentence beside the button says what you agree to by clicking it.
- Pick a Monthly limit. It starts at $50, and the choices run from $10 to $8,000.
- Keep working. The page shows what you have spent this period against your limit, and how many credits you bought.
- At the limit, Sakura stops again and offers Raise limit. Nothing is billed past the limit you set.
- Turn off pay-as-you-go, on the same page, turns it off.
Is Ultra or pay-as-you-go cheaper?
Ultra is cheaper once you would buy more than 24M credits of pay-as-you-go in a month on Pro. Below that, Pro with pay-as-you-go costs less.
What a million credits costs
- Pro’s included credits: $5 per 1M ($20 for 4M).
- Ultra’s included credits: $4.38 per 1M ($140 for 32M).
- Pay-as-you-go on either plan: $5 per 1M credits.
Where the two meet
Ultra costs $120 a month more than Pro, and $120 of pay-as-you-go buys 24M credits. So a month of 28M credits costs the same either way. Getting all of Ultra’s 32M on Pro would cost $160.
Ultra also has 4,800 AI actions a day instead of 600, and Sakura 2 High, the frontier model Pro doesn’t include. In practice, start on Pro and turn on pay-as-you-go for the occasional big month. If you spend more than $120 on it most months, Ultra costs less.
Can you use AI for PCB design for free?
Yes, with an AI you already pay for. Every plan, Free included, can connect Claude, ChatGPT, Claude Code, Codex or Cursor to Cherry Blossom through MCP. Your assistant gets Sakura’s tools on your projects: it adds parts, wires nets, lays out and routes the board, and runs checks. The tools run on our server and the model runs on your own subscription, so no Cherry Blossom credits are spent. Calls have a per-minute and a daily cap, the same on every plan.
The MCP setup guide has the steps for each assistant, and the MCP server post explains what it can do. For what Sakura does inside the editor, see what our AI agent can do.
What does every plan include?
The price only changes how much AI you get. Every plan, Free included, has the same editor and the same ways in and out:
- The schematic and PCB editors, Checks, the autorouter, Tidy and the free Clean up.
- KiCad import and export, plus Gerbers, drill files, BOM, pick-and-place, fabrication notes and a STEP model of the board.
- Sharing and live editing with others, links that open signed out, and version history.
- The parts library with real 3D models.
Questions
The editor is free: schematic, PCB layout, routing, checks, and every export, with projects saved to your account. Sakura, the AI agent, starts with Pro at $20 a month, which includes 600 AI actions a day and 4M credits a month. Ultra is $140 a month for 8 times that allowance and Sakura 2 High. Paying for a year costs less on both plans.
Cherry Blossom's Free plan is the full PCB editor without Sakura. On every plan, Free included, you can connect an AI assistant you already pay for (Claude, ChatGPT, Claude Code, Codex or Cursor) through MCP. It gets Sakura's tools on your projects and runs on your own subscription, so it spends no Cherry Blossom credits.
The editor and exports keep working, and only Sakura stops. Its panel says you have reached your plan's AI limit and offers the next step: on Pro, Upgrade to Ultra or Turn on pay-as-you-go; on Ultra, Turn on pay-as-you-go. If pay-as-you-go is on and its monthly limit is spent, the button is Raise limit instead.
At $5 per 1M credits, added to your invoice at the end of each month. It is off until you turn it on in your account's Usage page, and it stops at a monthly limit you choose, from $10 to $8,000 ($50 to start). Nothing is billed past that limit. You can turn it off at any time on the same page.
When you would buy more than 24M credits of pay-as-you-go in a month on Pro. Ultra costs $120 more than Pro, and $120 of pay-as-you-go buys 24M credits. Past that, Ultra costs less and also adds Sakura 2 High and 4,800 AI actions a day.
No. Credits come in a rolling 30-day window that starts with your first AI request, and the full amount comes back when the window ends. Unused credits from one window do not carry into the next.
Start free. Add Sakura when you want it.
The whole editor is free. Pro adds Sakura, and pay-as-you-go covers the big months.
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