The creator app has two modes: Foundry Lite and Foundry Pro. Lite keeps your own studio simple, your work, your galleries and your pages with the basic tools and nothing else in the way. Pro shows the full studio: every studio you belong to, your team, roles, invites, hiring, and all the tools. The switch is a single click in the avatar menu, it is free, and it is purely a view change: it never adds or removes a feature, and nothing you make is affected. This page explains both modes, how to switch, and the one thing people get confused about.
Foundry Lite and Foundry Pro are two ways of showing the same creator app. Foundry Lite folds the app down to one studio and the essentials, so a solo creator sees their projects, galleries and pages and not much else. Foundry Pro unfolds everything: multiple studios, the team tabs, hiring, stats, fulfilment, and every tool. It is a setting on you, not on your studio, so it follows your account to every device.
Switching between Lite and Pro costs nothing. There is no checkout, no plan change, and no feature is unlocked or taken away by the switch. Because Lite only hides surfaces, turning it on parks nothing and deletes nothing: your drafts, settings and work are all exactly where you left them, and switching back to Pro brings every tab straight back.
The switch is in your avatar menu, at the top of the settings group, on every page. It opens a short window where you pick a mode: in Lite the button reads Switch to Foundry Pro, and in Pro you can choose Use Foundry Lite or Keep Foundry Pro. You can also reach it from Preferences, and search for it with Ctrl or Cmd and K (try where did my tabs go).
Lite keeps the parts a solo creator uses to make and publish: Home and Studio, your Projects, Galleries, Inktober, Revenue, About and Settings, plus Create, Search, Help, Messages, Notifications, your account menu (including Plan and billing), and Muse. It folds away the surfaces aimed at teams and scale: the studio switcher, guided Import, and tabs like Tasks, Members, Events, Fulfilment, Commissions, Audience, Stats and Reach.
You do not have to leave Lite to use something it folded. An All tools sheet lists the folded surfaces so you can open one without switching modes. So Lite is a tidy default, not a cage: the everyday surfaces are on screen, and the rest are one list away when you need them.
A few surfaces are not in the All tools sheet, and the only way to reach them from Lite is to switch to Pro: Collaborate, Engagements (hiring), Tasks, Members, Commissions, Agreements, and the for-hire profile. The reason is honest: Lite is built around your own personal studio, which has no second person, so the team tools have nothing to act on there. When you want to work with other people, switch to Pro.
Lite shows your own personal studio, the one your account came with. Switching into Lite moves you there first, so you land on your own work. Switching back to Pro does not move you again; you stay where you are and the other studios reappear. A brand-new account with a single studio starts in Lite; an account that already belongs to several studios starts in Pro, so nobody has their other studios folded away by surprise.
This is the thing to get straight: Foundry Pro is a free view, not a purchase. Switching to Pro never charges you and never unlocks paid features; it just shows the full app. Paying for features is a separate matter, handled on the Plan and billing page, where the tiers are Free, Basic, Advanced, Premium and Enterprise. Those plans decide things like your Muse allowance and live collaboration; your Lite-or-Pro mode does not.
There is a third, separate setting to be clear about so it does not get tangled up with the mode. Inside an editor (the drawing canvas, lettering, and so on) there is a Basic and Advanced depth toggle that controls how many tools are on the bar. It is its own choice and applies in Pro too, where Basic is the default for everyone. Lite simply pins editors to Basic; switch to Pro and the Advanced toggle is available again. Like the mode, it hides tools, never your ability to use them.
No. Foundry Pro is a free view of the full app, not a paid plan. Switching to it never charges you and never unlocks paid features. Paying for features is a separate thing on the Plan and billing page, where the tiers are Free, Basic, Advanced, Premium and Enterprise.
You are most likely in Foundry Lite, which folds away the team and scale surfaces to keep a solo studio simple. Nothing is deleted. Open the avatar menu and switch to Foundry Pro to bring every tab back, or use the All tools sheet to open one folded surface without switching.
No. Lite is presentational: it hides surfaces, it never removes them. Your permissions and plan are unchanged, every page keeps its address, and almost everything Lite folds is still reachable from the All tools sheet. The team surfaces are the one exception, reachable by switching to Pro.
The team surfaces (Collaborate, Engagements, Tasks, Members, Commissions, Agreements, the for-hire profile) are not in All tools, because Lite is built around your own personal studio, which has no team to act on. Switch to Foundry Pro to use them.
Yes. The mode is a preference on your account, so it follows you to every device and stays until you change it. A new account with one studio starts in Lite; an account that already belongs to several studios starts in Pro so nothing is folded away unexpectedly.
No, that is a separate setting. The Basic and Advanced depth toggle inside an editor controls how many tools are on the bar and applies in Pro too (Basic is the default for everyone). Lite just pins editors to Basic. Your mode, your editor depth, and your plan are three independent things.
Foundry Lite for a calm solo studio, Foundry Pro for the full kit and your team, and a free one-click switch between them whenever your work changes. It is a view, not a purchase, so set it to whatever suits you today and change it the day that changes.
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