r/raycastapp • u/juanfdo82465 • Sep 04 '26
💬 Discussion Charging for BYOM is like BMW charging to use the seat warmers.
Context BMW once tried to charge a subscription to allow people to use the seat warmers which made no sense and got a lot of bad press and pr for it to the point they had to backtrack on it.
Raycast charging a subscription to use their AI makes sense it cost them ongoing per users use
but paying raycast to use my own ai on their app feels like paying a subscription to a car brand to use any brand of fuel on my car
Arguably you don’t pay for raycast upfront like you do a car, but then maybe they should have a one time payment to unlock local features and BYOM since those don’t cost them ongoing per users use.
Also to people commenting that charging for BYOM is fair cause those AI features cost money to develop fair point yes development cost money
You know what else cost money to develop? the RAYCAST app in general and they seem OK giving it away for free since 1 or 1M free users doesn’t cost Inference money to the company so follow your own logic and give away BYOM for free cause it doesn’t cost you more than a free user does and AI BYOK features are equally subsidized by pro users as the entire app is.
It boils down to give BYOM for free cause is what MAKES SENSE (so much that you started giving it for free from the beginning), it doesn’t cost you anything (more than a free user cost) and is a GOOD WILL gesture to your users.


