Raycast now has a Subscription option for Raycast Pro.
$8 per month when billed annually.
I was happy before but this makes me even happier to stay the course with Alfred and Keyboard Maestro.
Fortunately this doesnāt change the core functionality.
I donāt need AI or custom themes so weāre good. Not quite sure where value is added for $8/mo?
$96/year here, $50/year there, āless than a cup of coffee per monthā yada yada yada. No worries about subscriptions, itās only money.
I canāt tell for sure but it seems like theyāre putting some previously free features behind the subscription? Or at least expectedly free features. Theyāre listing window management and floating notes 2.0 under coming soon. Currently window management is free and the floating notes update wasnāt mentioned as a premium feature when discussing on Slack. Also sync was something I think people expected to be included in free eventually, but thatās not crazy to charge for.
I donāt begrudge them making money for their hard work, but this is just a further example not to bank on free being free forever.
Looks like $8 is the new $5 as far as subscriptions go.
Window management is listed in free as well. I think the 50-ish built-in commands are what youāll get for free, and then building or installing custom windowing commands will be premium when that becomes available.
Iām guessing some future features that would have been free a year ago will go in premium, though.
It seems like the AI feature has given them the most confidence they can sell consumer plans. That or the startup economy has hurt the market for a new team tool and forced them to try.
Iām glad I got used to Spotlight after Quicksilver. Now I donāt feel the need for any keyboard launcher.
The same line repeated over and over again
Hereās the feature comparison:
Custom theme and clipboard history features in pro are a bummer.
I must say $8/month is a lot considering Alfred was ~$60 for life. There are also workflows for AI in Alfred, so Iām not sure how helpful the AI features are.
Alfred is that and so much more!
Lol, this made my day. Itās cynical and true.
I donāt use Raycast, so these are general thoughts. I can understand sync and AI being under a subscription model since those are ongoing costs. It seems like AI is just a wrapper around ChatGPT. How much more value is it around AI?
Iāve been using RayCast AI and find itās valuable having it built into the launcher Iām using many times every day.
I donāt know if itās worth $8/mo., however.
From what I understood itās just for the use of AI.
Does it have limitation and does it support a proper conversations like ChatGPT or is it like a one time question?
Thinking wouldnāt $8/month be cheaper than integrating with the OpenAI APIs for requests
The ChatGPT thing is probably just thrown in because it was easy to develop - I doubt anyone is paying $8/month for that alone.
Using the ChatGPT API is really cheap. I am asking several questions a day and paid around 20 cent for API usage in April. There is an Raycast extension which can use an userās API key.