Obviously I'm happy to benefit from being able to use most model "for free" in my paid non ultimate account.

But I'm concerned that this will not rot the business model like that kind of thing happen for other services.

I would have preferred that the full of my subscription cost goes to the core feature of developing the search engine and directly the related feature. And as of today, I pay a separate premium if I'm interested by the AI assistant.

Now, with it being in all subscriptions, and knowing that anyway they can only work by paying the token price per request to all AI providers, it means less of my money going to the search index improvement, and what I'm more worried is that a forced increased of the subscription price in the coming years.

Something like, as you know, our costs are high, so we need to raise the pricing to stay sustainable.

Even if not the best reference, this remind me of Netflix saying look we are adding "videogames" (that no one wants) to your subscription for free, but now we will have to raise our prices, because you know, inflation and all of that ...

From my experience, Kagi always prefer to "trickle down" features to lower tiers . First they removed search limits from some plans without increasing the price. Now they're allowing to use the AI assistant, if you want.

The gist is, when you don't use the AI assistant, you still pay the base price, and that money goes to R&D, since your subscription money doesn't go to AI providers in the first place.

For example, I have no interest in AI assistant, and I won't use it. As a result, my support will Kagi won't change.