TL;DR:
Gifting a membership is live, and has been for about a week. Bronze, Silver or Gold, for 1, 3 or 6 months, paid with a card. Optionally anonymous, with a message.
A gifted membership is the full thing, monthly Buzz and badge included. Nothing to redeem, it applies the moment payment clears.
Gift an existing member and their next months come free. The tier has to match theirs. They keep their monthly Buzz and badge throughout, they just stop being billed for a while.
You can also buy a membership with Buzz. It's for people who have Buzz and would rather not use a card, or can't.
A Buzz membership is perks only. The limits, the priority, the vault, the private models, the higher price ceilings. No monthly Buzz, no Creator Program, and Blue Buzz can't buy one.
Paying with Buzz costs about 25% more than cash. It's a premium option: a one-off purchase rather than a subscription, bought with something you can earn.
Gifting
A handful of people found this one before we ever wrote it up.
Pick a person, a tier, and 1, 3 or 6 months. Pay with a card. They get a notification and an email, and it applies immediately. No code to redeem, nothing for them to do.
You can send it anonymously, and attach a message up to 500 characters.
A gift is a real membership, the same one you'd buy for yourself, monthly Buzz and badge and all. Gift somebody Gold and they get Gold, including the Buzz that comes with it every month.
Two rules worth knowing before you buy:
The tier has to match if they're already a member. You can't gift Gold to someone on Bronze as an upgrade, and we'll tell you before you pay rather than after. That's a limit in how our subscriptions work, not a call we're happy with: an account can only hold one subscription at a time, so a gifted Gold cannot pause somebody's Bronze and hand it back when the gift runs out. Annual plans cannot be gifted to either. We know both of those are annoying, and we're looking at what it would take to change them.
What the gift does depends on where they are. If they're already paying monthly, it doesn't tack time onto the end, it stops their card being charged: their membership renews on the same day it always did, and the next few bills come to zero. If they'd cancelled, or they have no membership at all, it really is added time, and it runs out at the end without ever charging them.
Buying a membership with Buzz
People have been asking for this one for a long time, so it's good to finally hand it over. You can now buy a membership with Buzz instead of money. It isn't identical to paying cash, so here's exactly what you get.
What it gives you: everything about how the site behaves for members. Generation limits, queue and quantity limits, priority, vault size, steps and resources, private models, and the higher price ceilings that come with a tier, including what you can charge for sticker placements and remix gallery spots. Worth being straight about that last one: your creator score is the bigger lever on those ceilings, and a membership moves them within your score band rather than lifting you out of it. Don't buy one expecting to jump the queue on price.
What it doesn't: monthly Buzz, bonus Buzz on purchases or daily rewards, the monthly badge, and Creator Program access.
Blue Buzz can't buy one. Blue Buzz is rewards credit, and it isn't meant to move between accounts, so the places it works are the ones where it's spent rather than transferred: generation and the other services, and the shop where creators accept it.
On the price
A membership costs about 25% more in Buzz than it does in money. It's a premium option, not the standard one: a one-off purchase you make when you want it, rather than a subscription, and paid with something you can earn rather than buy.
Tell us what you think
The perks split is what we'd most like your read on. We drew the line at everything that changes how the site behaves for you, and left out the parts that hand you Buzz back. If something on the other side of that line feels like it obviously belongs to a membership, say which one and why.