What is Civitai Buzz? The colours, the costs and the way around them
Buzz is the credit system on Civitai. Generating a picture, training a LoRA, tipping a creator or unlocking an early-access model all cost Buzz, and Buzz comes in three colours with different rules about where it comes from and what it can be spent on. This page explains it in plain words, and then explains why we built Graydient so you never need to think about it.
Everything here describes Civitai as it works at the time of writing. The site changes its rules from time to time, so treat the exact numbers as a snapshot and check the live price in the generator before you spend.
The three colours of Buzz
The colour decides where the Buzz came from, where it works, and what it can buy. The balances are kept separately and cannot be converted into one another.
| Colour | How you get it | What it can buy | Where it works |
|---|---|---|---|
| Green Buzz | Bought by credit or debit card, or paid out monthly by a Bronze, Silver or Gold membership (about 1,000 Buzz per dollar). | Generation and training of safe-for-work content, tips. | civitai.com only. It does not travel to the mature-content site. |
| Yellow Buzz | Bought with cryptocurrency or gift cards, earned as tips, bounty rewards, contest prizes and creator compensation. | Generation of any content rating, training, tips, bounties, early-access models, profile cosmetics. | The mature-content side of Civitai. It cannot be spent on civitai.com. |
| Blue Buzz | Earned, never bought: a welcome amount, a daily claim in the generator, reactions and posts, ad impressions while browsing, and creator compensation from SFW renders. | Generation and training of PG and PG-13 content; mature content too for members. | Both sites, but not transferable to another account and not usable for tips or early access. |
What things cost
Buzz is pegged at roughly 1,000 Buzz to one US dollar. What one render costs depends on the job:
- A Stable Diffusion 1.5 picture is one or two Buzz; a plain SDXL picture is around four to six.
- Larger resolutions, more steps and every extra LoRA raise the price of the same prompt, and Flux, Qwen and video jobs cost many times a basic SDXL picture.
- A share on top of each render goes to the creators of the checkpoint and LoRAs you used, so a well-loved model costs a little more to use.
- Memberships are Bronze at $10 a month for 10,000 Green Buzz, Silver at $25 for 25,000 and Gold at $50 for 50,000, with bigger batch and queue limits as you go up. Buzz you buy on top is extra.
- Training a LoRA, unlocking an early-access model, posting a bounty or featuring your content are separate Buzz purchases.
The rules that trip people up
- A membership pays out Green Buzz, not Yellow. If you joined to make mature content, the membership Buzz does not work for it on the card-paid site.
- Green and Yellow cannot be converted into each other. Buy the colour you will actually spend.
- Blue Buzz cannot be moved between accounts, tipped or used for early access. It is for your own renders.
- A render made with the wrong colour comes back blurred until it is unlocked with the right one.
- Crypto purchases are final, and the balance is only useful on Civitai. Leftover Buzz has no other use.
Why Graydient sidesteps all of it
Graydient is a GPU service for the same open models, sold the way a streaming service is sold: one monthly price, use it as much as you like. The Buzz questions simply do not exist here.
- No per-render price. A high-resolution Flux picture with four LoRAs costs the same as a quick SDXL draft: nothing extra.
- No colours, no conversion, no wrong balance. One plan covers every job the plan includes, in every app.
- No daily claim, no ad scrolling, no earning. You spend your time on prompts, not on topping up.
- Your Civitai models come with you: install them with one click from ModelTrends or paste a Civitai link, and they render on our GPUs. See running Civitai models unlimited on Graydient.
- Private by default. Your renders and your library are yours and are not used as training data.
| Plan | Yearly (per month) | Monthly | Includes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Images | $25$299.99 billed yearly | $29.99 | Unlimited images, your own LoRAs, custom bots, unlimited LLMs, 500GB storage. No video, no API. |
| Video Plus | $42$499.99 billed yearly | $49.99 | Everything in Images, plus short videos (best at 480p), unlimited music and dubbing, video extend and upscale, 1TB storage. No API. |
| Video Max | $84$999 billed yearly | $99.99 | Unlimited videos, longer videos up to 1440p, bigger image batches, fastest render times, 5TB storage, personal API. |
If you spend more than a Bronze membership on Buzz in a month, the image plan at $25 is already the cheaper option, and it never stops you mid-session. Every plan comes with a 7-day money-back guarantee.
Questions
Is Buzz the same as credits on other AI sites?
Roughly, yes: it is a prepaid balance that each job draws down. What makes Buzz unusual is that it comes in colours with different sources and rules, and that part of what you earn by posting can also be spent.
Can I get my Buzz back if I stop using Civitai?
Crypto purchases are described as non-refundable, and Buzz has no use outside Civitai. The models themselves are open and free to use anywhere, including on Graydient.
Does Graydient use Buzz or any credits?
No. Graydient has no credit system of any kind. A plan is a monthly price for unlimited renders of the jobs it includes, with fair-use limits only on how many jobs run at once.
Can I keep using Civitai for browsing and Graydient for rendering?
Yes, and many people do. Browse and compare models on Civitai or on ModelTrends, then install the ones you like into your Graydient library and render without a meter.