Token based pricing generally makes a lot of sense for companies like Zed, but it sure does suck for forecasting spend. Usage pricing on something like aws is pretty easy to figure out. You know what you're going to use, so you just do some simple arithmetic and you've got a pretty accurate idea. Even with serverless it's pretty easy. Tokens are so much harder, especially when using it in a development setting. It's…
Zed's Pricing Has Changed: LLM Usage Is Now Token-Based
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Re: Zed's Pricing Has Changed: LLM Usage Is Now Token-Based
#102Token based pricing generally makes a lot of sense for companies like Zed, but it sure does suck for forecasting spend. Usage pricing on something like aws is pretty easy to figure out. You know what you're going to use, so you just do some simple arithmetic and you've got a pretty accurate idea. Even with serverless it's pretty easy. Tokens are so much harder, especially when using it in a development setting. It's…
I agree that tokens are a really hard metric for people. I think most people are used to getting something with a certain amount of capacity per time and dealing with that. If you get a server from AWS, you're getting a certain amount of capacity per time. You still might not know what it's going to cost you to do what you want - you might need more capacity to run your website than you think. But you understand the…
My mental model is they’re assigning some amount of API credits to the account and billing the same way as if you were using tokens, shutting off at an arbitrary point. The point also appears to change based on load / time of day.
Re: Zed's Pricing Has Changed: LLM Usage Is Now Token-Based
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why: LLMs are increasingly becoming multimodal, so an image "token" or video "token" is not as simple as a text token. For autoregressive token-based multimodal models, image tokens are as straightforward as text tokens, and there is no reason video tokens wouldn’t also be. (If models also switch architecture and multimodal diffusion models, say, become more common, then, sure, a different pricing model more tied t…
> For autoregressive token-based multimodal models, image tokens are as straightforward as text tokens, and there is no reason video tokens wouldn’t also be. In classical computing, there is a clear hierarchy: text Is there a reason why video computing using LLMs shouldn't be much more intensive and therefore costly than text or image output?
Re: Zed's Pricing Has Changed: LLM Usage Is Now Token-Based
#104Prediction: the only remaining providers of AI-assisted tools in a few years will be the LLM companies themselves (think claude code, codex, gemini, future xai/Alibaba/etc.), via CLIs + integrations such as ASP. There is very little value that a company that has to support multiple different providers, such as Cursor, can offer on top of tailored agents (and "unlimited" subscription models) by LLM providers.
I am really tempted to buy ChatGPT Pro, and probably would have if I lived in a richer country (unfortunetley purchase power parity doesn't equalize for tech products). The problem with Windsurf (and presumably Cursor and others) is that you buy the IDE subscription and then still have to worry about usage costs. With Codex/Claude Code etc., yeah, it's expensive, but, as long as you're within the usage limits, which are hopefully reasonable for the most expensive prices, you don't have to worry about it. AND you get the web and phone apps with GPT 5 Pro, etc.
Re: Zed's Pricing Has Changed: LLM Usage Is Now Token-Based
#105Zed was supposed to be the answer to Atom / Sublime Text in my opinion, and I kinda do want to use it as my main driver, but it just isn’t there yet for me. It’s shameful because I like its aesthetics as a product more than the competition out there. Just this other day I tried using it for something it sort of advertised itself as the superior thing, which was to load this giant text file I had instantly and let me…
Similar experience: I added a folder to my zed project that was too big, causing zed to lock up and eventually crash. But because the default setting was to re-open projects on launch, I was stuck in a loop where I couldn’t remove the folder either. Eventually found a way to clear the recent projects, load an empty editor, and change the setting to avoid it in the future.
My JetBrains IDEs (RustRover, Goland) probably would have choked out too.
Re: Zed's Pricing Has Changed: LLM Usage Is Now Token-Based
#106Zed was supposed to be the answer to Atom / Sublime Text in my opinion, and I kinda do want to use it as my main driver, but it just isn’t there yet for me. It’s shameful because I like its aesthetics as a product more than the competition out there. Just this other day I tried using it for something it sort of advertised itself as the superior thing, which was to load this giant text file I had instantly and let me…
Re: Zed's Pricing Has Changed: LLM Usage Is Now Token-Based
#107Zed was supposed to be the answer to Atom / Sublime Text in my opinion, and I kinda do want to use it as my main driver, but it just isn’t there yet for me. It’s shameful because I like its aesthetics as a product more than the competition out there. Just this other day I tried using it for something it sort of advertised itself as the superior thing, which was to load this giant text file I had instantly and let me…
I know it's not Zed, but I am pretty satisfied with the results.
Re: Zed's Pricing Has Changed: LLM Usage Is Now Token-Based
#108Zed was supposed to be the answer to Atom / Sublime Text in my opinion, and I kinda do want to use it as my main driver, but it just isn’t there yet for me. It’s shameful because I like its aesthetics as a product more than the competition out there. Just this other day I tried using it for something it sort of advertised itself as the superior thing, which was to load this giant text file I had instantly and let me…
I feel like Zed stopped working on the editor itself since AI was rolled out. I also wanted it to be the open-source alternative to Sublime, but nothing comes close.
The way I see it, we’re sort of living in a world where UX is king. (Looking at you Cursor)
I feel like there’s a general sentiment where folks just want a sense of home with their tools more than anything. Yes they need to work, but they also need to work for you in your way. Cursor reinvented autocomplete with AI and that felt like home for most, what’s next? I see so much focus on Agents but to me personally that feels more like it should live on the CI/CD layer of things. Editors are built for humans, something isn’t quite there yet, excited to see how it unfolds.
Re: Zed's Pricing Has Changed: LLM Usage Is Now Token-Based
#109Prediction: the only remaining providers of AI-assisted tools in a few years will be the LLM companies themselves (think claude code, codex, gemini, future xai/Alibaba/etc.), via CLIs + integrations such as ASP. There is very little value that a company that has to support multiple different providers, such as Cursor, can offer on top of tailored agents (and "unlimited" subscription models) by LLM providers.
A tool that is good for everyone is great for no one.
Also, I think we're seeing the limits on "value" of a chat interface already. Now they're all chasing developers since there's a real potential to improve productivity (or sadly cut-costs) there. But even that is proving difficult.
Re: Zed's Pricing Has Changed: LLM Usage Is Now Token-Based
#110Am I wrong in that GitHub Copilot Pro apparently has the best overall token spend when considering agentic editors?
I've been exclusively using Claude Sonnet 4 model in VSCode and so far I've used 90% of the premium quota at the end of the months. I can always use GPT4.1 or GPT5-mini for free if need be.