Tiers and pricing

JobEmber has four pricing tiers. They differ in two dimensions: which AI providers process your data, and what features are available. You pick your tier in Profile → Plan & Billing.

Free

Pricing: $0. No credit card required.

Providers: Gemini free tier + Ollama (local) only. No data leaves the JobEmber server’s network beyond Gemini’s free endpoint.

What works on Free:

  • Job search and discovery (Stages 1–2).
  • AI detector (with a low daily quota — 2 runs per document by default).
  • Reading your applications and templates.
  • Full account management (edit profile, change CV templates, manage voice samples — but not generate voice profiles).

What doesn’t work on Free (demo / stub responses):

  • CV/CL generation: returns your stored CV template verbatim, plus a random Cover Letter from your stored CL templates. No tailoring to the job posting. The Stage 3 UI shows a “DEMO MODE” banner so you know this is happening before you click Generate.
  • CV/CL rewriting: blocked. The Rewrite button is disabled.
  • Voice profile creation: blocked. The “Create My Voice” button is disabled in Settings → My Voice.

Free is for kicking the tires. If you want real generated CVs and cover letters, pick Low or higher.

Low

Pricing: Pay-as-you-go, roughly $0.02–$0.10 per CV generation. No monthly commitment — you deposit credit and we decrement it per run.

Providers: DeepSeek + Gemini, with Ollama (local). DeepSeek and Gemini are third-party LLM services that may train on your data (DeepSeek’s training policy is opaque; Gemini’s free tier will train on user inputs); Ollama runs locally and sends nothing to a third party.

What works on Low: every feature. CV/CL generation, rewriting, voice profile creation, AI detection — all run through real LLM agents.

Why “insecure”: Your CV content, employer research, and writing samples pass through DeepSeek and Gemini. If you’re applying to confidential roles, or if your CV mentions sensitive information you don’t want training a model, pick Medium or High instead.

Low is the cost floor: the cheapest paid tier with full functionality.

Medium

Pricing: Pay-as-you-go, roughly $0.10–$0.30 per CV generation.

Providers: Split routing. Sensitive operations (CV/CL generation, CV rewriting, voice profile creation, AI detection) run on Anthropic (Claude Sonnet). Non-sensitive operations (job search, employer research, scoring) run on DeepSeek (cheaper, but only ever sees public job-board content, never your CV).

Medium is the balanced choice: your career content stays with Anthropic, but search-side work uses cheaper providers where the privacy stakes are lower.

High

Pricing: Pay-as-you-go, roughly $0.30–$1.00 per CV generation.

Providers: Anthropic only. Every agent run routes through Anthropic, including job search and scoring. No DeepSeek, no Gemini, no Ollama.

Models on High: premium tier. Anthropic’s Claude Opus for sensitive operations, Sonnet for lighter tasks. (Additional no-training providers may be added in future; none other than Anthropic is active on High today.)

High is for users handling confidential career information — for instance, a job search you don’t want any current employer’s procurement team to see in a third-party LLM’s logs.

How to pick

Default to Medium if you’re not sure. It’s the right balance of cost and privacy for most users.

  • Pick Free to evaluate the product before paying.
  • Pick Low if you’re cost-sensitive and not handling confidential roles.
  • Pick Medium if you want premium privacy on your career content but don’t mind cheaper providers for search/research.
  • Pick High if you need maximum privacy across the whole pipeline.

How the cost is calculated

Each agent run reports its actual provider cost (tokens × per-million rate). JobEmber multiplies that by a per-tier service margin to cover infrastructure, support, refund risk, and provider price volatility. The multiplier is invisible to you — your statement shows one total figure per run, not “$0.04 model cost + $0.02 service margin.” The margin is small (25–40%) and decreases at higher tiers.

When your balance reaches zero, your plan automatically switches to Free and your payment_status shows past_due. Pick a paid tier again after topping up to restore the previous level.

Switching tiers

Open Profile → Plan & Billing. The picker shows all four tiers with their pros and cons. Click “Select this tier” on the one you want. Tier changes take effect on the next agent run; the current balance is preserved.

You cannot switch INTO a paid tier with a zero balance — top up first (the picker shows “Top up balance first” on disabled tier cards).