Credits replace rate limits, flat rates replace meters: a normal week with structural moves

Raycast split Pro into Pro, Plus and Max with bundled AI credits of 500, 3,000 and 7,500, added Plus at $20 a month and Max at $50 a month with Teams equivalents, and removed the flat $8 a month Advanced AI add-on ^[12]. The company's post introduces Max as a new plan at $50 per month for heavier usage ^[1], keeps Pro at $10 a month with 500 credits ^[2], and gives every existing subscriber a bonus month of AI Credits to ease the transition ^[3].

Vercel bundled Edge Requests, Fast Data Transfer, Blob Data Transfer and Sandbox Data Transfer overage pricing on Pro into a new flat-rate CDN plan, and the Pro card bullet changed from Faster builds to Flat Rate CDN ^[13]. Vercel describes Flat Rate CDN as an alternative to usage-based CDN billing with a predictable monthly bill ^[4]; the limited-beta changelog says it covers spikes across the CDN and that Edge Requests and Fast Data Transfer are no longer metered ^[5].

Canva dropped the Pro individual plan from US$180 a year to US$144 a year, a 20% decrease, and restructured AI metering: Free fell from up to 200 Standard or 20 Premium AI uses to up to 20 Standard or Premium uses, while on Pro, Business and Enterprise Standard AI no longer draws from the metered allowance at all ^[14]. Coverage still describes Free as up to 200 Standard or 20 Premium uses a month with the headline AI features behind Pro at $144 a year ^[6], and confirms $144 a year as the annual rate ^[7].

DeepSeek merged v4-flash and vision-exp into one deepseek-flash V4.1 model at lower cache-hit, cache-miss and output prices, and added a footnote that V4 Pro pricing stays unchanged past Sept 14, 2026 ^[15]. The launch note says deepseek-v4-flash and deepseek-v4-flash-vision-exp temporarily route to V4.1-Flash for compatibility ^[8] and that new pricing took effect at 04:00 UTC on Sept 10, 2026 ^[9]. Analysts recorded the reversal on Pro: the page added a footnote on September 17 that Pro API service continues after September 14 with billing unchanged ^[10].

Together AI raised Qwen3.7-Max from $1.25 per 1M input tokens with $0.13 cached and $3.75 output to $2.00 input with $0.25 cached and $6.00 output, and added DeepSeek V4.1 Flash at $0.30 input, $0.006 cached and $1.20 output per 1M tokens ^[16]. A catalog bot caught the Qwen3.7-Max step the same week, noting the pricing page now shows $2.00 input and $6.00 output ^[11].

Raycast frames credits as the way Raycast AI can work through longer tasks on its own, with each plan carrying a monthly allowance ^[1][2]. Vercel sells Flat Rate CDN on predictability: a known monthly amount and no surprise overages from temporary spikes ^[4][5]. DeepSeek presented the merge as compatibility first, with old model names routing to the new one ^[8]. Canva let the price cut and the renamed AI usage section speak for themselves ^[14].

Coverage caught the Raycast change quickly and the Canva change not at all. Raycast's own post is the primary source and matches our capture on every tier ^[1][2][3]. Canva guides still quote the old Free allowance of 200 Standard or 20 Premium uses ^[6], so the cut to 20 uses on Canva Free is visible only on the page. On DeepSeek, analysts tracked the Pro routing plan and its September 17 reversal in detail ^[10]. For Together AI, the only external record is a catalog-maintenance issue ^[11].

Pricing pages logged 196 changes across 193 companies in the week of Sep 7 → Sep 14, a 1.0 ratio to the eight-week average of 194.1 ^[17]. Packaging led: 86 packaging changes against 54 pure pricing changes and 56 product changes; expansions ran at 52, a 0.7 ratio, and contractions at 35 ^[17].

Price direction was balanced: 15 increases, a 1.0 ratio to the mean of 15.3, against 8 cuts, with 8 hidden-pricing events and 8 reveals ^[18]. The largest cut was Canva's 20% on Pro ^[14]; the largest increase was Together AI's Qwen3.7-Max step ^[16]. Promotions were quiet at 15, a 0.8 ratio to the average of 18.5 ^[19].

The structural theme was the unit: Raycast moved from rate limits to credits, Vercel from metered CDN to a flat plan, DeepSeek from two models to one. A normal week by count, with the plans underneath rewritten.