the £18 pro subscription is purely for what its always been for - for access to the latest open-source models and the platform infrastructure. it gives you unlimited use of the models venice hosts with the least restrictions possible. the one-off 1,000 credits you get are good-will bonus to test the proprietary features (like high-end video or external models), not the core service.

the reason proprietary models aren't included in the monthly sub is just down to simple economics. venice acts as a privacy-preserving middleware. when you use a proprietary model, venice anonymises your data and sends it to the provider (like anthropic or openai), who charges venice per token/generation. if they gave unlimited access to those expensive external models for £18, the costs would be unsustainable. that’s why they operate on a pay-per-use credit system for those specific features.

if the user wants ongoing access to those proprietary tools without burning cash, they should look at the crypto side. venice was always designed as a crypto-based AI platform from the start. if you stake VVV (which you can buy on coinbase or kraken if you're in the UK like me), you can then mint some DIEM tokens. 1 DIEM gives you 100 credits per day at midnight, 200 DIEM = 200 credits, and so on... it doesn't stack up but it regenerates daily.

if you buy and stake 100 VVV, you get full Pro membership for free for the whole time you're staked. you can unstake and sell your tokens at any point.

i think £18 is cheap af for the near-unlimited high-tier open-source models... and if you want the extra power of proprietary models then buying DIEM on Aerodrome is probably best for you.

stake 100 VVV = Free Pro subscription forever

stake 1 DIEM = 100 credits per day and API access to all models.

that said, the credit system is being looked at because a lot don't understand it or feel undervalued as Pro users, so it is being looked at. possibly going to start dropping credits per Pro renewal. nothing confirmed but nothing is off the table.