Hiya,
The Fair Pricing mechanism is intended to tackle two main things:
- It removes Kagi from of the typical predatory optics of platforms whose model intends to get you to subscribe, and then "forget" about it for months while the company rakes in income. You can try Kagi, then if you forget about it because you don't end up using it, you don't have to worry about us draining your bank account every month.
- A lower friction way for people on monthly subs who would like to "pause" their subscription for a while. A common reason that people would unsubscribe would be to save some money for a few months before coming back. Under this mechanism they can set their default search engine to something else, then come back when they are ready, and never have to deal with actually cancelling/resubscribing.
That is all there is to it - it is not a credit system.
Likewise the AI usage limits are limits solely to prevent abuse, not intended to be accruing credit. Specifically when it comes to AI usage, we will soon be migrating to a system where - if you opt-in - we will allow you to exceed the limits and be payed for your exact overage, instead of the clunky "renew early" mechanism we have now. Please stay tuned for an update on that soon.
So hopefully that clarifies the status quo. I think it's extremely unlikely that we would prorate re-activation as you describe, but there might be an argument for a threshold of a few searches to smooth over the edge case you describe of someone on an annual plan activating at the end of their period - possibly showing you some kind of warning message in that state.
Appreciate the feedback, and we're happy to continue brainstorming here on other ways we can improve the billing experience.
