The AI Billing Watch
Subscription prices in AI are not really prices any more. The industry moved from flat monthly fees to credits, quotas and metered billing, so the number on the pricing page is a floor rather than a cost. This tracks every pricing change, shutdown and acquisition we have recorded, with the source for each one.
74
Dated findings
Each one sourced
22
Pricing changes
Across 18 apps
48
Apps that moved
Of 60 we track
16
Sold or shut down
3 dead, 13 new owners
Why We Keep This
We keep this because the change almost never arrives as a price rise. A plan keeps its price and starts buying less, a credit converts to fewer seconds of video than it did last quarter, an allowance moves from monthly to one-time, or a product is absorbed into something else and the signup page stays up. None of that shows on an invoice, and none of it appears in a review written the year before.
So we record it. Every finding below sits on the app's own review page too, dated by when the thing happened rather than when we noticed. This page is just all of them in one place, which as far as we can tell nobody else is assembling.
Findings By Year
The shape is the story: this is not a handful of vendors having a bad quarter.
2022: 1 findings. 2024: 5 findings. 2025: 25 findings. 2026: 43 findings.
The Five Ways It Happens
Almost every change below is one of these. Knowing which one you are on tells you what to watch, because they fail in different directions.
Credits
6 appsYou buy a number that is not money and not time, and the vendor decides what it converts to.
How it bites: The conversion rate can change without the price changing. Your plan costs the same and buys less, which does not read as a price rise on any invoice.
Which apps, and what to do ↓Hide ↑
- Notion AI2.5 cyders
Notion credits sold per thousand, with agents metered on top of a seat price
Work out your credit burn per seat before an annual renewal. AI capability now sits on the higher-priced plan, so the upgrade path is the real cost, not the credit pack.
Full pricing breakdown → - Descript2.5 cyders
Two separate pools, media minutes and AI credits, with top-ups sold separately
Treat it as month to month. Legacy plans were ended outright rather than grandfathered, and the vendor conceded some existing prices would rise.
Full pricing breakdown → - Synthesia4 cyders
A shared credit currency consumed by generation and dubbing alike
Convert your actual minutes into credits before renewing. A plan quoted in credits is not comparable to the minute allowance it replaced without doing that arithmetic.
Full pricing breakdown → - Gamma2.5 cyders
Monthly credit allocations, with a free allowance that never refills
The free tier is a one-time sample, not a free plan. If you are relying on it, you are on a trial that has not told you it is a trial.
Full pricing breakdown → - Canva Magic Studio3.5 cyders
A shared AI allowance expressed as a multiple of the free tier, plus a paid add-on
There is no published credit number to plan against. If AI is why you are paying, confirm what your plan's allowance actually is before you build a workflow on it.
Full pricing breakdown → - Adobe Firefly3 cyders
Generative credits per tier, on standalone plans separate from Creative Cloud
The top tiers are advertised at a first-year promotional rate. Check what year two costs before committing, and note the entry price is higher than the widely-quoted old figure.
Full pricing breakdown →
Quotas
2 appsA flat fee buys you an allowance per day or week, and work stops when you hit it.
How it bites: Nothing is overcharged, you are just stopped mid-task. Quotas are also easier to tighten quietly than prices are to raise.
Which apps, and what to do ↓Hide ↑
- Windsurf (formerly Codeium)2.5 cyders
Daily and weekly usage quotas, with overage bought at API pricing
Existing paid subscribers were grandfathered on price. If you are on an old plan, check what happens to it before you change tier, because you cannot go back.
Full pricing breakdown → - Claude (Anthropic)4 cyders
A rolling five-hour window plus a weekly cap, with extra usage sold at API rates
If you hit the wall most days, price the API against the subscription ladder. Heavy users frequently pay less on the API than on the next tier up.
Full pricing breakdown →
Metered / usage
6 appsYou are billed for what you consume, at or near the underlying API cost.
How it bites: The published monthly price is a floor, not a price. Heavy users can pay several times the sticker and only find out at the end of the month.
Which apps, and what to do ↓Hide ↑
- GitHub Copilot3.5 cyders
Token-metered AI credits, replacing counted premium requests
Model a week of your real agent usage before renewing. The cheap-model fallback that used to absorb overflow is gone, so there is no soft landing when the budget runs out.
Full pricing breakdown → - Cursor3.5 cyders
A monthly credit pool billed at API rates, plus unlimited auto-routed models only
Set a spend cap and pay monthly. Anysphere changed this plan under existing subscribers once and apologised for it; the apology does not come with a price guarantee.
Full pricing breakdown → - Replit AI2.5 cyders
Effort-based pricing, so cost scales with compute and how big your project is
Expect the same prompt to cost more in a large repository than a small one. Budget by project size, not by number of requests.
Full pricing breakdown → - Zapier AI3 cyders
AI steps billed by model tier, multiplying task consumption
The default tier is the expensive multiplier, not the cheap one. Audit which model your existing Zaps default to, because the same automation now consumes several times the tasks.
Full pricing breakdown → - Lexis+ AI2 cyders
Per-transaction list charges for AI actions taken outside a flat subscription
Out-of-subscription AI use is priced per action at figures that dwarf a monthly seat. Anyone running searches outside the bundle needs to see the price schedule first.
- Tabnine2.5 cyders
Quote-gated enterprise seats, with LLM tokens billed at provider cost plus a handling fee
There is no individual tier left to fall back to. If you were on the old cheap developer plan, there is nothing to renew into.
Ad-supported
1 appsThe free tier stopped being a loss leader and became inventory.
How it bites: The product you use for free is now optimised against a second customer, and it is not you.
Which apps, and what to do ↓Hide ↑
- ChatGPT4 cyders
Advertising on the free and lower tiers
Nothing to do if you pay. If you rely on the free tier for work, understand that the incentives behind what you are shown have changed.
Gone or absorbed
7 appsShut down, acquired into something else, or no longer sold on its own.
How it bites: Old recommendation articles keep sending people to a signup page that still takes a card for a product with no roadmap.
Which apps, and what to do ↓Hide ↑
- Copy.ai2 cyders
Self-serve jumps from an entry chat plan straight to a four-figure platform tier
The affordable writer tiers are gone and the product is now part of a go-to-market platform. Export anything you want to keep.
- Writesonic2 cyders
Repositioned as a search-visibility platform at a far higher entry price
If you are here for the old cheap writing plan, it does not exist. Evaluate what it sells now against tools in that category, not against a writing assistant.
Acquired, then wound down; the hosted voice models were switched off
Check your card for a charge with no product behind it, and pull any audio you still need while it is retrievable.
- Sourcegraph Cody1 cyders
Free and Pro tiers discontinued; only the enterprise product remains
Individual developers were pushed to a separate product. If you are an individual, this is not a tool you can buy any more.
Removed from the API and replaced by a different image model line
Anything calling the old model names is broken or about to be. Migrate to the current image models.
Acquired; the technology now ships free inside a different product
Former paid plans no longer exist. The successor is currently free with a daily limit, so do not pay anyone for this.
- WordTune1.5 cyders
Active development stopped; the site is still online
A site that still takes subscriptions is not the same as a product being maintained. Do not start an annual plan here.
The Graveyard
Products still recommended by articles written before they died, plus the ones that merely changed hands. We keep the review pages up so people searching find out here instead of after paying.
Cannot be bought (3)
Under new owners (13)
Still on sale, but the roadmap belongs to someone else. Acquisitions are where quiet repricing tends to start.
Every Finding, Newest First
Dated by when the event happened, not when we found it, so an entry older than our rating means we missed it the first time round.
Jasper AI's BBB profile shows 16 complaints in the last three years, 8 categorized as billing issues and 14 left unanswered by the company, a pattern of unresolved billing/auto-renewal disputes.
Copy.ai's public self-serve pricing now starts at a $29/mo Chat plan (5 seats) and jumps straight to $1,000/mo Growth with metered workflow credits; the old low-cost writer tiers and a self-serve free plan are absent from the pricing page.
Writesonic has repositioned from an AI writing tool into an 'AI Search Visibility Platform'; its own pricing page now starts at $79/month (Starter), with $199 and $399 tiers and no cheap entry-level AI-writer plan. Old advice citing low-cost writing plans is out of date.
Tabnine's current pricing page no longer lists a free tier or the old ~$9/user individual Dev plan: it shows only two enterprise packages, $39 and $59 per user per month on annual subscription, both quote-gated, with LLM token consumption billed separately at provider cost plus a 5% handling fee.
Midjourney's own documentation confirms there is no free trial on Discord or midjourney.com; a paid subscription is required to use it at all.
Canva's current pricing page no longer states fixed Magic Studio credit counts; AI access is a vague shared 'AI allowance' expressed as multiples of Free (Free capped at ~20 uses), with a paid 'AI Pass' add-on and top-ups sold separately.
Canva's help centre confirms the allowance model: Standard AI tools draw from the shared monthly allowance on Free and Pro Lite, and the allowance resets on the billing date rather than as a published credit number.
Synthesia has converted its self-serve plans (Basic, Starter, Creator) from minute-based allowances to a shared credit currency consumed by video generation, dubbing and other AI features, at 2 credits per second of video (120 credits per minute).
Get the next one before your renewal
This page is 74 findings and counting. We keep checking whether or not anyone is reading, so the only question is whether you hear about the next one from us or from your card statement.
Using This
Take it. Quote it, link it, argue with it. If you are writing about AI pricing and want the underlying entries, they are on the review pages with their sources attached, and we would rather be cited than scraped. Know of a change we have missed, or think we have something wrong? Tell us and we will fix it with the source.
Every entry above is dated and linked to the vendor page, filing, or published report it came from. Scores shown are our own editorial verdicts in cyders out of 5, not an average of other people's ratings. How we score. Vendors keep changing plans, so confirm current pricing with the vendor before you buy.