Replit has changed a lot since we launched in 2016 — evolving from a simple IDE to a place where you can learn, build, host, and share your software creations with millions around the world.
Today, I’m excited to share we’re launching new boost levels that we hope will make your creation experience on Replit a lot more powerful. Replit has always been about software development - raising the ceiling of what you can build and share online instantly.
We’ve added a lot of power and value to Replit over the years and are launching more to help you unlock more value and power on Replit. We believe it’s important to adjust our pricing to reflect these changes and ensure that we can continue to provide a first-class experience for those building on our platform. This is not a decision we made lightly.
We know changes like these are hard. We’re here to listen to your feedback. In light of that, please keep feedback civil and constructive so we can respond to your concerns in a timely manner.
Update:
We understand changes like these are hard. We didn’t make this decision lightly. We looked at costs, talked to hundreds of users, and thoroughly analyzed the market. Thank you all for the thoughtful feedback you have provided. In the spirit of transparency and building in public, I’ll highlight some of our thinking below.
We serve 18M+ users and have continued to add power and features to Hacker. All while not changing pricing at all since 2016. This has made it hard for us to build a sustainable business - our margins are negative - and long term would have prevented us from serving everyone better. We looked at options and sought to find ways to charge for the value that we offer.
Our free tier continues to offer outsized value over other services, and continues to get better by the week. We also support thousands of people learning to code with our free content like 100 Days of Code and Teams for Edu (which we made free earlier in 2022).
Everything from wakeup time to layout work to workspace features have and will continue to improve. Make sure you read our newsletters and socials for new features coming soon like better search, huge Nix improvements, platform upgrades, more powerful hosting, and many more improvements and other features.
We also now offer folks a Bounty marketplace that is integrated with the IDE, which is a world’s first that allows people to earn on Replit.
We want to build a product that our users truly value, one that we are confident that they will use for years to come based on the value it provides.
We will be releasing more features that will have much more power in the future — better bundles, hosting/deployments with more reliability than Always-on, more storage than you will know what to do with, incredible AI Ghostwriter tools, all connected to the amazing Replit community.
We intend to deliver on our promise of being the most powerful development experience in the world. Thank you all for being a part of the Replit community.
Sorry for the confusion Haroon. We are not planning to sunset Hacker. We will introduce new Hacker bundles throughout the year that will include other benefits like Ghostwriter. We are also planning to make improvements to the Cycles purchase and consumption experience.
The reduction of boosted repls from 5 → 1 combined with the sole survivor of a ‘boosted’ repl being chopped down to 2 vCPU + 2 GB RAM is a real pain point for me.
The attraction of hacker plan for me was specifically private boosted repls.
Even only having a couple of boosted repls a month makes for a monthly expense in cycles of about $40 along with the existing hacker plan which would be required to keep existing private repls and to ensure the ongoing creation of private repls.
$40/mo (plus about $5 accounting for the annual hacker plan payment) starts to look like a really decent VPS from a top tier provider.
I’d hope it’s possible to reconsider the nerf that boosted repls suffer in the new hacker plan reorg, but would assume that boat has sailed.
yeah, I have the same complaints, essentially, making hacker plan still $7 dollars is really, really bad, since you would be paying the amount reasonable for 5 always on, 5 boosted, and infinite private repls (7.5 dollars a month with cycles), but only getting 1 boosted repl, 1 always on and private repls
Please don’t do this! I loved the old hackerplan. I had 5 projects all private, boosted and always on. It’s so sad I need to discontinue 4 of the 5 projects. Do you feel the pain too?
I dont like these changes with giving hackers a lot less stuff though I am happy that you are giving ~3.5 months’ notice.
Always on. I understand that it costs more than 2 cents a day for this but this probably wont make that much more money. I am saying this because it many people will just us pingers like uptime robot or others.
Boosted. I love how we can pay more for more powerful boosts! But again with lowering the number 1 one with hacker and making them cost a lot more with cycles. People may move to other platforms where its cheaper of free.
Private repls (forgot about this since its staying the same with hacker). These repls do not cost $1.50 to host though I understand you need to make money some how. But $5! I think that is too much. Like I said above with boosted this will give people another reason to switch if they are using cycles for privet repls.
Also will people that have Hacker right now get some sort of gift or something to help with the new prices like a 1 time “gift” of cycles?
There was nothing wrong with the old Hacker plan. You’re really making me consider cancelling my hacker plan. The push for users to buy Cycles is no absurd. Just take a hint that the majority if the users that use this platform doesn’t like Cycles. No need to now come after the hacker plan.
If anything, make a NEW hacker plan. Something like hacker 2.0. All you’re doing is trying to force people to switch to Cycles for no reason.
I feel the same, since always can be essentially substituted with a slew of external pingers, but as LZulb has said, this feels like a push towards cycles as they’ve made it so it’sbasically grossly too expensive and unreasonable to buy hacker plan as you barely get any value, and getting cycles would be the only feasibly and reasonable way.
I loved Replit for what another poster said, private, boosted Repls at an attractive price.
With the massive price increases here, maybe I’m just not the target customer.
It also bugs me how positive sounding and misleading the communication / emails around this has been. This is clearly a downgrade in basically everyway, and an expensive one at that.
Changing the hacker plan is frustrating, but I understand you need to please yours investors and make money.
This is a terrible way to go about it, you should have instead figured out a grandfather strategy, given everyone until the end of their billing cycle or simply not do this and instead make new plans more interesting/tempting.
I think if you had removed just ghost writer it would be more acceptable, but essentially cutting the plans resources makes it a lot worse.
I’ve deleted all my repls and cancelled my subscription, such a shame.
I simply don’t want to leave anything in repl.it anymore, I’ll go my own path to replace what repl.it did for me.
I have them all backed up so if repl.it change their mind I can restore, but I don’t see it happening.
I am a member of the Replit Hacker plan, and as a member I am a bit disappointed at the recent update. The main additions from this update are (as specified in the email and note I received in the editor):
Reducing the number of Boosts and Always On we provide from 5 each to 1 each
The base power of Hacker Repls to 0.5 vCPU and 0.5 GB
Removing our AI-powered helpers that will be available through Ghostwriter
We’re also excited to add a boost to your active coding session. This means that anytime you’re actively coding in the workspace, your Repl will automatically be boosted to have 2vCPU and 2GB of RAM!
I am really disappointed that the Always On repls is being lowered, and boosted repls. I also believe that getting rid of AI-powered helpers and moving them to Ghostwriter is also a disappointing change. This update seems to lower the value and mostly negatively impact the Hacker plan, a long with promoting more stuff to Cycles. It seems as if Cycles are being prioritized over Hacker plan enough to move features from Hacker to Cycles.
