This is yet another fairytale to sell us more “AI” subscriptions.
AI is going to kill app subscriptions
131–140 of 250 posts
Re: AI is going to kill app subscriptions
#132> it costs almost nothing to build an app, it costs almost nothing to clone an app.
For the types of apps that AI can clone on its own, this has always been true. It's the eternal bookstore example, recipe collection, or my-dvd-collection app. The type of apps that Basic and Visual Basic were designed for.
If there was value in selling subscriptions to an app like this, it was probably coincidental.
Re: AI is going to kill app subscriptions
#133> it costs almost nothing to build an app, it costs almost nothing to clone an app. I guess the author hasn't done real software development. The cost isn't just for the code. It's for the whole process - especially the architecture. Which database to use for the use case, which framework and language to use, how the database should be structured,table naming standardization, best practices, security audits and every…
> This article was written by AI btw Unless you had an AI write the article, you can't possibly know that. I'm sick of this being randomly thrown around: it's basically mentioned for every article posted. Sometimes the author chimes in to say that no, they wrote it themselves. Other times sure, the article was written by AI. I don't know, and you don't know either .
Eh, sometimes you know.
Re: AI is going to kill app subscriptions
#134The trick with this wave of fast apps will be getting others to use the things that are built. Sure you can build something for yourself quickly enough, but you'll likely need the rest of your team onboard, which comes with a slew of other problems and complexities.
Re: AI is going to kill app subscriptions
#135Everyone who has built software knows that the hardest parts involve making complex, tricky decisions with tradeoffs. Let’s say you make a grocery list app. Now you have to make decisions about all the different ways to specify quantity. Units, weight, dollars, bunches… oh, and fractional vs. decimal weight, etc… The claim is that now every random person now will build their own app and have to make those hard decisi…
A grocery list app is the perfect example of the kind of thing that AI will make obsolete. Why would I pay $5/month for a list app when I can pay Claude $0.30 one time to make it for me? I in fact did just that. I used Claude to reverse engineer my grocery store's API and build a grocery list app that automatically pulls in the aisle information for each item and sorts it by how I typically walk through the store. It…
I think an engineer might, but my mother and wife will certainly pick the $5/mo option every time.
Re: AI is going to kill app subscriptions
#136I fundamentally disagree with the premise: "The math is simple: if it costs almost nothing to build an app, it costs almost nothing to clone an app. And if cloning is free, subscription pricing dies. We're already seeing this play out in the numbers. Apple's App Store got 557K new submissions in 2025, up 24% from 2024 (source: Appfigures). That's not because people suddenly got more creative. It's because building an…
> You're about to see the most tech innovation our species has ever experienced.
With all due respect, we're definitely not. If any of what you said was even the faintest bit true, then we'd have something to show for it already.
Re: AI is going to kill app subscriptions
#137Oh, thank god, it had been a week since we last saw a post about AI killing something. It’s subscriptions this time, all users will be vibe coding apps on their spare time.
Re: AI is going to kill app subscriptions
#138> For apps that run locally—no servers, no cloud costs—subscriptions make no sense anymore. Did it ever make sense? I always scoffed at the idea of paying a subscription to use a text editor or paint tool.
It never made sense, it was just possible to get away with it because there's often been no alternative for many people. Good riddance to software subscriptions. I hope proprietary software goes the same way entirely. If it's trivial to build an open source competitor, why pay for software can't modify (also trivially).
And we will all love from fresh water and love, can't wait for that world!
Seriously, you pay for software so people can make a living to improve it. It is a service like anything else.
Re: AI is going to kill app subscriptions
#139> it costs almost nothing to build an app, it costs almost nothing to clone an app. I guess the author hasn't done real software development. The cost isn't just for the code. It's for the whole process - especially the architecture. Which database to use for the use case, which framework and language to use, how the database should be structured,table naming standardization, best practices, security audits and every…
Vibe code to production perhaps not, but vibe code for regular personal use doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibility already. Unless there is inherent complexity in the problem (and assuming subscriptions don’t get pricey soon) I can see nontechnical people getting into designing their own apps. It makes me think of 3d printing. A lot of people got into 3d modeling because of it. And a lot of people publish cute…
I don't disagree with the premise, but I still can't think of a SaaS that I'm paying for that I can replace. And I have many subscriptions.
Re: AI is going to kill app subscriptions
#140I daresay we're going to see a burgeoning situations where the software (code) is open-sourced under a permissive or copyleft license, while the associated data, content, or assets (e.g., datasets, models, or databases) are handled under separate, often more restrictive licenses.