Checklist before you start

Drawn from what we hit in practice — the traps that cost real money or force a rewrite.

1. Confirm the tool still exists Luma Genie shut down on 01/01/2026, so any 3D workflow guide written before that date is already broken; Meshy, Tripo and Rodin are the working alternatives. Verify on the official pricing and docs pages before locking a workflow or a budget — marketing pages go stale long before pricing pages do.
2. Read the commercial terms first Tripo's free tier bans commercial use and publishes the models you generate under CC BY 4.0, which means a client's product mesh becomes public. Meshy's free tier lets you sell the output but requires attribution (CC BY 4.0) — pick the tool on licensing terms before you generate 50 models, not after.
3. Never compare credits across vendors Tripo's free tier gives 200 credits a month (roughly 8 models) and Meshy's gives 100, but credits do not convert between vendors, so the bigger number is not the cheaper deal. The only honest comparison is generating the same object on each tool and counting the models you actually get.
4. Download every model immediately Tripo's free tier stores a maximum of 10 models, so model 11 forces you to delete work or upgrade in the middle of a project. Export and archive to your own storage the moment a model passes review — a vendor account is not a repository.
5. Budget for queue time, not just credits Meshy states that free accounts sit in a slower generation queue than paid ones, so your throughput depends on wait times as much as on remaining credits. Before committing to a delivery date, run a test model during your actual working hours and measure the real wait.
6. Only pick the API with a developer Per-generation API pricing usually beats a subscription at low volume, but it requires a developer account, an API key and code to call it. If your 3D team has no developer, that API price is theoretical — plan around the subscription tiers you can use directly in the browser.