Funny how psychology works in AI models pricing.

Today, the same $20 pricing plan includes models and agentic tooling an order of magnitude better that the best setup a year ago. At the same time, the decades of SaaS taught us to expect paying the same price every year for constantly developing and improving tools.

So, unable to raise the price, AI providers just turned their “subscriptions” into paid trials.

1.5 years ago you could develop with Sonnet on a $20 Pro subscription. 9 months ago, a 10x more expensive Max would give you enough of the latest Opus. Today, another 10x more expensive API key is your only option, while the subscriptions are only enough for two messages.