What's included on your plan
Marking.ai always lets you review and edit your existing work. What changes from one situation to the next is whether you can start new marking, and whether the paid features are switched on. This article explains which features are always available, which need an active plan or trial, and exactly what you’ll see in each billing state.
The two kinds of feature
Core marking is always available whenever you have submissions to spend — an active subscription, your free trial, a top-up balance, or a school pool:
- Marking submissions
- Re-marking an individual question
The paid features sit behind an active plan or trial:
- Marko, your AI assistant
- Student summaries and class summaries
- Assessment insights — the Overview class-performance metrics, the Questions tab, and the Misconceptions report
- Advanced analytics — the home dashboard metrics, including Time saved
- Bulk export
- Share links — read-only student result links and emailing feedback to students
Two of these — share links and advanced analytics — stay on even without an active subscription, in the top-up-only, paused, and payment-issue states. The rest (Marko, summaries, insights, bulk export) need an active plan or trial.
Two things are never gated: marking a submission (whenever you have credit) and re-marking a question. Reviewing, reading, and editing existing marks and feedback always works.
What each billing state includes
Trial
You’re on the free trial — 6 submissions on a personal email, 20 on a school / work email, plus anything earned through referrals or the educator bonus.
- Marking: yes, drawn from your trial submissions.
- Paid features: all on. The trial is a full-feature preview.
Subscription (active)
You have an active Starter, Pro, or Plus plan.
- Marking: yes — from your monthly allowance first, then any top-ups.
- Paid features: all on.
- At your monthly cap: you stay in the subscription state, so every feature keeps working. You just can’t start new marking until you top up, upgrade, or your allowance resets. See Hitting your submission limit.
The key thing to understand: running out of your monthly allowance while subscribed does not switch off your paid features. Only dropping out of an active subscription does that.
Top-up-only
You’re marking on top-ups with no active subscription — you’ve never subscribed but bought top-ups, your trial ran out and you topped up, or your subscription is paused or has a payment issue.
- Marking: yes, as long as you hold top-up submissions — they never expire.
- Paid features: mostly off — Marko, summaries, insights, and bulk export need an active subscription. Share links and advanced analytics stay on. See Top-up packs.
Paused
You’ve paused your subscription (Settings → Billing → Pause).
- Marking: from top-ups only — your monthly allowance is frozen while paused.
- Paid features: same as top-up-only — Marko, summaries, insights, and bulk export are off, but share links and advanced analytics stay on (paused subscriptions route through the top-up-only state).
- Coming back: hit Resume and your allowance and full feature set return immediately. See Pausing your subscription.
Payment issue (past-due)
A renewal payment failed and your subscription is past due.
- Marking: continues if you hold top-ups; otherwise new marking pauses until the payment is fixed.
- Paid features: same as top-up-only — Marko, summaries, insights, and bulk export are off, but share links and advanced analytics stay on — until the subscription is healthy again.
- Fixing it: update your card via Manage billing and everything comes straight back. See Failed payments.
No credit left
With no subscription, no top-ups, and no trial remaining, new marking is blocked and the paid features stay off until you subscribe or add credit. Your data is untouched and waiting.
At a glance
| State | New marking | Paid features |
|---|---|---|
| Trial | Yes (trial credit) | On |
| Subscription (active) | Yes (allowance → top-ups) | On |
| Subscription at monthly cap | Paused until reset / top-up / upgrade | On |
| Top-up-only | Yes, from top-ups | Most off — share links + analytics on |
| Paused | From top-ups only | Most off — share links + analytics on |
| Payment issue | From top-ups only | Most off — share links + analytics on |
| No credit left | Blocked | Off |
What a locked feature looks like
When a feature isn’t available on your current plan or state, you’ll see a locked panel with a padlock and an Upgrade to unlock this feature message (or “This feature is available on a paid plan”), plus a See plans button that takes you to Settings → Billing. Sometimes the feature is still visible behind the panel, dimmed — so you can see what you’d get — but you can’t interact with it until you upgrade.
Need help?
Open the Account menu and choose Chat to a human, ask Marko, or email connect@marking.ai.
FAQs
I’m on the free trial — is anything held back?
No. The trial is a full-feature preview, so you get insights, summaries, sharing, Marko, and exports while it’s active.
I’m subscribed but hit my monthly limit — did I lose Marko?
No. A subscriber at the monthly cap keeps every feature. Only leaving an active subscription (pause, payment issue, or cancellation) switches the paid features off.
I have top-up submissions but features are locked — why?
Top-ups are marking capacity. Most paid features are tied to an active subscription, so on their own top-ups put you in the top-up-only state — marking on, and share links and advanced analytics on, but Marko, summaries, insights, and bulk export off. Start or restore a subscription from Settings → Billing to unlock those.
My balance ran out — did I lose my marks?
No. When your balance is used up, new marking is paused, but everything you’ve already marked — marks, feedback, summaries, and reports — stays readable.