Reviewed by Amit KumarRaycast is a launcher: one keyboard shortcut opens a command bar, and from there you open apps, search files, manage windows, paste from clipboard history, expand snippets, take notes and run extensions. It replaces a handful of small utilities with one surface. The launcher is free, and AI arrives on paid plans: Pro is $10 a month for 500 credits, Plus is $20 for 3,000 and Max is $50 for 7,500.
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Raycast Review: Free Plan, AI Credits and Pricing
Keyboard-first command bar, with AI on paid plans
Quick verdict
The free plan is the real product for most people, and the subscription buys one thing, AI in the command bar. The pricing has a quirk worth knowing. Pro gives 50 credits per dollar while Plus and Max give 150, so doubling your spend from $10 to $20 triples the allowance. And Raycast says credits are not tied to a number of messages, so what an AI month costs you cannot be forecast from the page.
Best forKeyboard-driven Mac and Windows usersInternal tooling behind one command barTeams sharing snippets and commands
How we reviewed Raycast
Every Raycast plan, price and limit in this review comes from Raycast's own pages, checked on , and links to the page it came from. All 3 sources are listed at the end. A review cannot be bought. How these reviews are written
On this page
Raycast at a glance
Prices come from raycast.com/pricing and the credit mechanics from Raycast's manual. We read the manual on 24 September 2026 and the pricing page again on 13 October 2026. Raycast was listed on Product Hunt in 2020 and has a strong community signal there: 36K followers and a 4.9 rating from 160 reviews. It won the 2023 Golden Kitty Awards, and Raycast Notes took the Personal Productivity Golden Kitty for 2024. Raycast 2.0 landed at #4 of the day on 11 September 2026. The company is Y Combinator-backed.
What is Raycast used for?
Replacing a drawer of small utilities
Clipboard manager, snippet expander, window manager, launcher, calculator and notes collapse into one shortcut. This is the free tier's whole pitch, and for many people it is the entire reason to install it.
A front end for internal tooling
Custom extensions plus the private store on team plans let you put deploy scripts, internal lookups and runbooks behind the command bar everyone already uses. The developer tooling is on the free plan, so building one costs nothing.
AI without leaving the keyboard
The paid tiers put a model behind the same shortcut, a different ergonomic from switching to a browser tab. Whether that is worth $10 a month depends on whether you would actually use it there.
Standardising shortcuts across a team
Teams Free already shares up to 30 snippets and quicklinks and 5 commands at no cost, enough to standardise the common ones before anyone approves a budget.
Is Raycast free?
The launcher is, and it is complete. AI is not included at any level of the free plan. That is a cleaner split than most freemium products manage, and it matters before you compare Raycast to an AI tool, because on the free tier it is not one.
- Free includes: the core launcher, thousands of extensions, the ability to write your own, developer tooling, 5 Raycast Notes (checked 13 October 2026), and clipboard history limited to 3 months.
- Free excludes: Raycast AI entirely, cloud sync between machines, dictation, custom themes, the translator, and unlimited notes.
- Teams Free: $0 a user, with up to 30 shared snippets and quicklinks and up to 5 shared commands, plus a private extension store.
Plenty of people use Raycast for years without paying. If you want a faster way to drive your machine, the free tier is the product. If you want AI in the command bar, that is the whole of what a subscription buys.
How much does Raycast cost?
Individual plans: Pro is $10 a month ($96 a year), Plus is $20 a month ($192 a year) and Max is $50 a month ($480 a year). Team plans run $15, $25 and $65 a user a month for the same three tiers. The annual rates for Plus and Max were not published when we first read the page; the page we read on 13 October 2026 lists them (checked 13 October 2026).
Raycast plans, in USD, checked 13 October 2026. Credits per dollar is our arithmetic from the published credits and monthly prices.
| Plan | Monthly | Annual | AI credits a month | Credits per dollar |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 | None | n/a |
| Pro | $10 | $96 | 500 | 50 |
| Plus | $20 | $192 | 3,000 | 150 |
| Max | $50 | $480 | 7,500 | 150 |
| Teams Pro | $15/user | $144/user | 500 | 33 |
| Teams Plus | $25/user | $240/user | 3,000 | 120 |
| Teams Max | $65/user | $624/user | 7,500 | 115 |
Pro adds cloud sync, dictation, custom themes, the translator and unlimited notes alongside its AI. Plus adds top-tier models; Raycast's manual calls it Pro+. Enterprise is quoted by sales and adds an AI control centre, organisation admin controls and SAML/SCIM.
Pro is the worst value per credit, by a factor of three
Pro buys 50 credits per dollar. Plus and Max both buy 150, from 500 ÷ $10, 3,000 ÷ $20 and 7,500 ÷ $50. Plus and Max land on exactly the same rate, so above $20 you are buying volume at a flat price, not a better one. Max is for sustained heavy use, not for better value.
If 500 credits is comfortably enough, Pro at $10 is the cheapest way into Raycast AI. The moment you run out, go to Plus rather than topping up Pro, since you are paying three times the rate at the bottom of the range. If you exhaust 500 credits in your first month, that is the signal to move.
What is an AI credit?
Not a message. Raycast's manual is explicit: "Credits measure AI usage, not a fixed number of messages. How many you use depends on the model and how much text it reads and writes." It goes further: "Input and output are priced differently, so the same prompt can cost different amounts on different models." Long conversations, attachments, tool calls and edited messages all add to the total.
So Raycast will not tell you how many questions $10 buys, and by its own explanation it cannot. The only way to size a plan is a month on Pro watching the meter. Budget on the assumption that heavy use of top-tier models burns credits faster than light use of fast ones, because that is what the manual describes.
A naming inconsistency to know about
The pricing page calls the $20 tier Plus. The manual calls the same 3,000-credit tier Pro+. Same price, same allowance, two names across Raycast's own documentation, which matters when you are searching support articles for the plan you are on.
Is Raycast Mac-only?
No longer. Raycast for Windows was listed on Product Hunt on 21 November 2025 and finished #1 of the day. For most of its life Raycast was a macOS product, and much of the writing about it still says so.
One caveat on sourcing: the Windows release is documented on Raycast's Product Hunt listing, while raycast.com/pricing still frames availability around macOS and does not enumerate platforms. If you are buying seats for a mixed fleet, confirm Windows feature parity with Raycast before assuming the two builds are identical.
Who Raycast suits, and who it does not
It suits people who work from the keyboard and resent reaching for the mouse. Developers most obviously, but anyone who lives in many applications at once. The extension library is the real moat: thousands of extensions, plus the ability to write your own, which turns the launcher into a front end for whatever internal tooling you have. The team tiers suit a shared-knowledge problem more than an AI one, since shared snippets, quicklinks and commands and a private store let a team standardise small automations that otherwise live on one person's machine. Start with Teams Free before Teams Pro.
It does not suit anyone shopping specifically for an AI assistant. Raycast is a launcher that sells AI as an add-on, not an AI product with a launcher attached, so if AI is the point, buy an AI product directly and keep Raycast free. Nor does it suit anyone who needs to forecast AI spend precisely, because the manual says the unit is not predictable.
Raycast screenshots
More of Raycast's own website, captured . Each caption says which page it shows.
Sources
The pricing, credit and award details below were read on 24 September 2026. The pricing page was read again on 13 October 2026.
- Raycast pricing: individual and team plan prices, annual rates, AI credit allowances and what the free tier includes
- Raycast manual: AI usage limits: the statement that credits are not messages, that input and output price differently, and the Pro / Pro+ / Max allowances
- Raycast on Product Hunt: the 2023 Golden Kitty, the 2024 Personal Productivity award, the Windows release at #1 of the day, follower and review counts
Raycast pros and cons
Pros
- The free launcher is complete, not a trial, with thousands of extensions and developer tooling included
- Plus and Max buy AI credits at three times Pro's rate, so scaling up improves value
- Teams Free shares snippets, quicklinks and commands at $0, enough to standardise a team
- Annual rates are published for Pro, Plus and Max: $96, $192 and $480 a year
- A strong community signal: 36K Product Hunt followers and 4.9 from 160 reviews
- Not Mac-only any more: Raycast for Windows reached #1 of the day on Product Hunt in November 2025
Cons
- AI is entirely absent from the free plan, so Raycast is not an AI tool until you pay
- Pro at $10 buys only 50 credits per dollar, a third of the rate on Plus and Max
- Credits are deliberately not tied to a number of messages, so AI spend cannot be forecast
- The $20 tier is called Plus on the pricing page and Pro+ in the manual
- Clipboard history on the free plan is capped at 3 months
- The pricing page frames availability around macOS, so Windows feature parity needs confirming
The bottom line on Raycast
Best for
- Keyboard-driven Mac and Windows users
- Internal tooling behind one command bar
- Teams sharing snippets and commands
Facts checked
Visit RaycastRaycast FAQ
Is Raycast free?
The launcher is, completely. The free plan includes the core command bar, thousands of extensions, custom extensions, developer tooling and three months of clipboard history. AI is not included: Raycast AI, cloud sync, dictation, custom themes, the translator and unlimited notes need a paid plan starting at $10 a month.
How much does Raycast cost?
Individually, Pro is $10 a month or $96 a year, Plus is $20 a month or $192 a year, and Max is $50 a month or $480 a year. Teams plans are $15, $25 and $65 a user a month, or $144, $240 and $624 a user a year. Enterprise is quoted by sales. Checked on raycast.com/pricing, 13 October 2026.
What is a Raycast AI credit?
Not a message. Raycast's manual says credits measure AI usage, and that how many you use depends on the model and how much text it reads and writes. Input and output are priced differently, and long conversations, attachments, tool calls and edited messages all add to the total.
Which Raycast plan is best value for AI?
Plus at $20 a month, on the arithmetic. Pro gives 500 credits for $10 (50 per dollar), Plus gives 3,000 for $20 (150), and Max gives 7,500 for $50 (also 150). If 500 credits is enough, Pro is the cheapest entry; if it is not, go straight to Plus.
Does Raycast work on Windows?
Yes. Raycast for Windows was listed on Product Hunt on 21 November 2025 and finished #1 of the day. raycast.com/pricing still frames availability around macOS, so confirm Windows feature parity with Raycast if you are buying for a mixed fleet.
What is the difference between Raycast Plus and Pro+?
Nothing. They are the same $20 tier with 3,000 AI credits a month: the pricing page calls it Plus and Raycast's manual calls it Pro+. Keep both names in mind when searching support documentation.
Alternatives to Raycast
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Reviewed by
Amit Kumar
Full Stack AI Strategist
Amit Kumar runs MPAT, where he reviews AI tools and writes its guides. When he covers a tool he checks its pricing, credits and plan limits against the vendor's own pages, so readers know what a plan includes before they pay. He also leads the site's SEO and AI-focused content strategy.
