Marking and licence, one plan apart or together
On one entry the marking boundary and the commercial licence start at the same plans. On the other they are a plan apart, which leaves a subscription producing clean files that may not be published. As of 2026-09-12.
| On this question | LTX Studio | Pika |
|---|---|---|
| Marking stops at | The entry paid plan, fifteen dollars | The third plan, twenty-eight dollars |
| Commercial use starts at | One plan higher | The same plans as the marking line |
| The gap | One tier, clean and unpublishable | None |
| How the free answer is read | A cumulative additions list | An icon beside a repeated line |
| File contents | Nothing published | Nothing published |
Inclusion rule. One row per question on which these two entries can be compared from their own published pages. Questions neither vendor addresses are left out rather than filled with a dash. Order. Fixed order: the mechanism first, then who holds it, then what it leaves behind.
| Generator | Paid tier | Document read |
|---|---|---|
| LTX Studio | No watermarking from Lite ($15/mo) | pricing page |
| Pika | Watermark-free from $28 Pro | pricing page |
Inclusion rule. The two entries on this page, with the value each one's own pages support in the column they diverge on. Order. Alphabetical by generator name.
1Two boundaries that a reader tends to merge
A clean file feels like a publishable file, and on one of these entries it is: the same plans carry watermark-free download and commercial use, so nothing sits between them. On the other the marking line starts at the entry paid plan and the commercial licence one plan higher, which produces a tier whose output has no mark and no permission.
The vendor's own wording for the plans below its licence boundary is personal use, excluding promotional activity for a business, product or service. A studio reading only the marking line would conclude that the cheaper subscription is enough to ship, and nothing about the file would reveal the mistake.
2Why the register records the two lines separately
Keeping them apart looks pedantic on the entry where they coincide. It is the only arrangement that survives a vendor unbundling them, which is a redesign away on any grid. A row that had merged the two would show no change at all on the day it happened.
It also keeps the columns honest about what they are. The marking columns record what a file carries; a licence records what may be done with it. Those are different facts with different sources, and on one of these two entries they have different prices.
3Both grids hide their free answer in the layout
Neither of these free cells is a sentence. One is read from a cumulative additions list, where a feature named at one tier is inherited upward in silence, so absence above the crossing point means nothing. The other is read from an icon, because the same feature line is printed under all four plans.
Both readings have to be redone when a grid is redrawn, and both are the kind of thing a text-only reader gets backwards. On one of them the crossed icon also covers commercial use, which is how the coincidence of the two boundaries on that entry comes to be visible at all.
4Sources
- Paid tierNo watermarking is listed from the Lite plan at $15 a month upwardfrom Lite
- Paid tierWatermark-free download is included from the $28 Pro plan upwardfrom Pro and Fancy
Both values above are read from the vendor pages linked in the rows: ltx.io and pika.art, on 2026-09-12. Each entry has its own page, LTX Studio and Pika, and the rule for the column they diverge on is on the paid tier column page. Other pairs: crossing points with no figure, a reference and a card.