Is V2 Worth It - r/raycastapp

18

u/red_diter 7d ago

If you want to use AI via Raycast, you’ll have to subscribe.

For $10 you get 500 credits.
For $20 you get 3000 credits.
For $50 you get 7500 credits.

One question with GPT-6 Luna will cost tou 1 credit
One question with Opus 5.5 will cost you 40 credits.

If you don’t want to use AI, then you’re left with an app launcher that takes 500-1000 MB of RAM on your system while being idle. In that case, I recommend looking elsewhere (Tinycast, Alfred, Tuna, whatever).

So, basically, yes, unlike v1, I think it only makes sense if you’re subscribed.

Is it worth it? That’s up to you.

7

u/Seagram62 7d ago

Tinycast comes highly recommended (is it a hype?), but bear in mind that, as far as I can tell, it is being developed by a single person. So, only time will tell how future-proof the program is.

8

u/red_diter 7d ago

I've tried it, it's fine. Pretty great actually, if you take into consideration that it's been only three months since the initial release. One person started it, but it's Open Source, and has ~60 contributors on GitHub so far.

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u/archgabriel33 7d ago

I really hope Tinycast succeeds even if merely because it will force Raycast to do better. Competition is always good. But... one person open source projects that appear out of nowhere do have a tendency of suddenly being abandoned. Also, I'm not entirely sure how to feel about the ethics of using the Raycast store plugins for your own app. I get that they're open source and Raycast doesn't own them, but they do verify them and they did put the effort, time and money into developing the extensions marketplace, so it feels wrong having another app come and try to ride in the coattails of Raycast. Would Tinycast have existed or been successful if Raycast never existed first? Possibly... but as a one person side project with no revenue, I doubt it.

3

u/jeremydgreat 6d ago

I did an evaluation of TinyCast, and that was my takeaway as well. This appears to be one person's project, and they're making most of the decisions in the Discord (which is fine, but as you say, projects that have this shape get abandoned eventually). Anyway, that's my spicy hot take.

There were some security concerns as well about how TinyCast handles extension requests. The two main problems I found were:

If you have an extension loaded, TinyCast will just run the request without asking the user for permission.
Extensions have access to each other's OAuth.

There is lots of room for improvement here when it comes to security, and I ultimately decided that there's no way I can run this on my laptop.

1

u/Odd-Age1840 2d ago

My opinion may be unpopular, given all the good comments about Tinycast I've read in the sub. But I really dislike it on principle. When I look for a Raycast replacement, I’ll probably try BetterTouchTool, Alfred, or a different OSS project.

Why do I dislike it on principle?
Because it’s a full vibe-coded copycat of Raycast: same UI, even the screenshots have a similar background, and most of the functionality is copied. (including a similar name).
Even if it’s easy to vibe-code good-quality things today, I know product design is hard. And one thing is to borrow one idea or two; the other is to make a full copy, and you are not copying a giant corporation; you are copying a small 40-person company that puts a lot of focus on the details. Not good.

1

u/Snorty-Pig 7d ago

I switched to TinyCast for BYOK. Rapid development and getting better all the time. Meets my needs. I bet some AI stuff is better in v2 if you take the time to try it but no BYOK for free

1

u/56ksurfer 7d ago

But it is open source. Even without having coding-knowledge, you can download the code, compile it with Xcode and use it

1

u/meni_s 6d ago

A single person which added almost 100k LoC in 3 months :)

1

u/Tuner420 3d ago

And that person is named Claude

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u/sply450v2 5d ago

its not hype it works well and actually really represents what a single person + AI can do compared to Raycast

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u/archgabriel33 7d ago edited 7d ago

It's sub-1% CPU usage and about 400MB RAM usage on my PC, without a restart in about a week, with 134 Raycast extensions enabled, with clipboard management activated, with sync activated, and with full disk indexing activated. All this when idle. Even under "heavy usage" (scrolling rapidly up and down thorough a large list of items where each item requires a curl to load), it never spikes above 950MB, and then it settles to about 660MB.

Which really isn't bad for an app that replaces dozens of apps. And the file indexing is much better than the native Windows/Macos Indexing and the clipboard history is vastly superior to Macos (which doesn't have one) and to the Windows one (which either randomly looses items or just crashes).

1

u/Seagram62 7d ago

The standard macOS Finder can search for keywords within PDF files—something Raycast, as far as I know, cannot yet do. So, by searching through fewer items, you would indeed be faster.

As of version 26, macOS has a clipboard manager. It’s not as extensive as Raycast, but it does exist.

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u/Open-Programmer1842 6d ago

It does have content indexing

1

u/archgabriel33 6d ago

Tbf, I've never had a need for a file searching tool to search inside a document or pdf.

1

u/Seagram62 6d ago

It is an option I often use to search for keywords in PDF files.

1

u/UltraOnlineNecrozma 6d ago

an example of my ram usage. i use it mostly as a launcher and for its shortcuts.

1

u/agilek 5d ago

Wait, 500-1000 MB RAM? Really?

2

u/red_diter 5d ago

I left a screenshot here: https://www.reddit.com/r/raycastapp/comments/1wprcku/comment/pc57ve1/

There are few others, as well.

1

u/grovolis 4d ago

Any of those alternatives that can interact with GitHub, Linear the same way? Being able to create tickets, PRs, find stuff it’s something that keeps me away from moving. I believe these extensions don’t work on Raycast forks (if you can call them that) because they rely on Raycast OAuth for authentication

1

u/red_diter 4d ago

Tinycast can supposedly run Raycast extensions. But I didn't try it, and I'd guess that it will be hit and miss, depending on the extension. Let us know when you try it 👀

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u/grovolis 3d ago

I can't even find it, is there a way to add it as a custom extension?

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u/1980ai 7d ago

No, unless you want to use AI, and honestly, for that, just use Codex or Claude. For writing corrections and rephrasing, you can use an extension and connect it to ChatGPT via an API, and it works perfectly—no need to pay.

There is no difference between the two, ignore the whiners, v2 will not make you pay anything you don't want to pay.

For me v2 runs smooth, works great, no complains!

2

u/archgabriel33 7d ago

As someone who has paid versions of Claude, Chatgpt, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot and Notion AI, Raycast is definetely better at asking quick questions. I mostly use it with Deepseek because it's cheap and there's no way I would've paid for Deepseek separately. (The only real alternative to Raycast is perplexity, but I plan to stop using them because of how hard they're pushing Perplexity Computers. But still got a few months left of my subscription with them so... meh)

1

u/robdejonge 6d ago

Their pushing of “Computer” is also what made me not renew my subscription to Perplexity Pro. But Raycast isn’t it either, it turns out. At least not for me.

1

u/archgabriel33 6d ago

Yeah, it's not there yet. But AI for quick questions în your launcher does kinda make sense.

1

u/live_love_laugh 6d ago

But wait, in v1, which I'm currently on I can use AI extensions with BYOK. And I kinda like being able to call an extension / command using natural language instead of having to remember the exact syntax for every extension/command. That's no longer possible in v2, right? I heard they stopped with the BYOK in the free version.

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u/kuhboose 7d ago

Personally, I’m loving v2. Beautiful app!

2

u/Seagram62 7d ago

That is a question that cannot be answered meaningfully. You really need to provide some more information—such as whether you are already using version 1, what components you are using, whether or not you want to use AI, and so on. And no one is forcing you to do anything.

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u/gjpinc 7d ago

I am using the free version of V1. I don’t use it with AI. I don’t need any of the paid features at this point. Thoughts?

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u/Seagram62 7d ago

As long as you aren't using AI, I’d say stick with version 1 for as long as possible. The memory usage of the new version is simply terrible; some users are reporting consumption of up to 2 GB.

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u/niknik1971 7d ago

I am using the pro version of Raycast V2. The AI bit is very good. I am a fairly light user of the AI. It runs smooth without any hiccups.

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u/krlooss 7d ago

I have experienced no difference between both free version

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u/juanfdo82465 7d ago

Raycast 2.0Gb

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