Why the Trial Is 30 Days and the Price Is $29
People ask me about the pricing a lot, and usually in a specific way. Not "is it worth it," which I answered in another post, but "why those numbers." Why 30 days and not 7? Why $29 and not $19 or $49? The assumption is that the numbers are marketing guesses, pulled from a hat of what feels right.
They aren't. Both numbers are doing specific jobs, and I want to explain what those jobs are, because the maker's view of pricing is usually more honest and more interesting than the marketing version.
Why 30 days
Here is the first thing to understand about autocomplete. It doesn't show you what it's in an hour, or a day, or even a week. It shows you what it's after the reflex forms, and the reflex needs reps, and the reps need days. I wrote about the day-one-day-three arc in another post, and the short version is that day one you notice the tool, day two you argue with it, and day three you stop noticing it, which is when you can finally judge it.
Thirty days exists because the real judgment happens in the third week, not the third day. A seven-day trial is long enough to form the reflex and too short to trust it. You need to get past the novelty, past the arguing, into the stretch where the tool is furniture, and then decide whether you want the furniture. Thirty days is the difference between judging a tool and living with it, and living with it's the only fair test.
There is also a second, quieter reason for 30 days, and it's about trust. A tool that asks for permissions and reads your typing should be willing to prove itself for a full month before asking for money. A short trial reads as confidence in the wrong thing, confidence that you'll forget to cancel. A 30-day trial with no card required reads as confidence in the tool, and that's the confidence I actually have.
Why no card required
The no-card part isn't a detail, it's the point. The trial doesn't ask for a card, which means there's nothing to forget to cancel, no surprise charge, no "we will start billing you after the trial" email. When the 30 days end, the app just tells you the trial is over, and you decide. That decision is the whole funnel, and I'd rather earn it cleanly than trick people into it.
There is a grace period after the trial too, a few extra days where the app keeps working while you decide, because life happens and a trial shouldn't end on the exact day you were traveling. The whole thing is designed so that the only way you pay is a deliberate, informed yes. I wrote about the network ledger and the license mechanics elsewhere, and the short version is that the trial is minted on first launch, locally, no account needed.
Why $29
Now the price, and this is where the maker's view gets specific. $29 isn't a guess at what the market will bear. It is the answer to a question: what does the five-year math have to look like for this to be the obviously sane choice?
The subscription autocomplete tools cost somewhere in the range of six to nine dollars a month, and I did the full five-year math in another post. The punchline is that a subscription crosses the one-time price in the first few months and then keeps climbing. $29 is set so that the comparison isn't close, because the whole point of a local tool is that there's no server to keep paying for, and the price should reflect that architecture. I'm not charging what the market will bear. I'm charging what the tool costs to sustain, and the tool costs almost nothing to run per user, because it runs on their Mac.
$29 is also deliberately low enough that the decision is about the tool, not the money. I don't want anyone thinking about whether they can afford it. I want them thinking about whether the gray words make their typing better. At $29, that's the only question left.
What the numbers add up to
Here is the maker's view of the whole package, and I think it's coherent. 30 days, because that's how long a fair judgment takes. No card, because the decision should be clean. $29 once, because the tool is local and the math should be obvious. A refund window after purchase, because a tool that lives in your typing should be risk-free to try for real. And on the newer Macs, an Apple Intelligence mode that stays free even after the trial, because there should always be a working path. I wrote about what the $29 covers in the buyer's guide, and the numbers all point the same way: this is a tool that wants to be judged on its own merits, not on billing tricks.
The trial is free for 30 days and there's no card to remember to cancel. Try it for the full month, let the reflex form and the history build, and decide in week three, when you can actually judge it. The numbers were chosen so that the only thing you've to think about is whether the tool helps, and that's exactly how pricing should work.
Sources
- WriteAmp terms: the 30-day trial, grace period, and license terms
On macOS 26+ Macs, Apple Intelligence mode stays free even after the trial ends — you always keep a working path to suggestions.
Written by Amit Ashwini, who builds WriteAmp and runs its marketing. More: why the Tab key beats the chat box · mini, midi, and max compared · benchmark methodology.