# Tier System

Snipe uses CircuitForge's three-tier model.

## Tiers

| Tier | Price | Key features |
|------|-------|-------------|
| **Free** | Free | Search, trust scoring, red flags, blocklist, market comps, affiliate links, saved searches |
| **Paid** | $5/mo or $129 lifetime | Photo analysis, background monitoring (up to 5 searches), serial number check |
| **Premium** | $10/mo or $249 lifetime | All Paid features, background monitoring (up to 25), custom affiliate ID (BYOK EPN) |

## Free tier philosophy

Snipe's core trust-scoring pipeline — the part that actually catches scammers — is entirely free and requires no account. This is intentional.

More users = more community blocklist data = better protection for everyone. The free tier drives the network effect that makes the paid features more valuable.

## Self-hosted

Running Snipe yourself? All features are available with no tier gates in local mode. Bring your own LLM (Ollama compatible) to unlock photo analysis and description reasoning on your own hardware.

## BYOK (Bring Your Own Key)

Premium subscribers can supply:
- **Local LLM endpoint** — any OpenAI-compatible server (Ollama, vLLM, LM Studio) unlocks AI features on Free tier
- **eBay Partner Network campaign ID** — your affiliate revenue instead of Snipe's

## Cloud trial

15-day free trial of Paid tier on first signup. No credit card required.
