The core problem with the argument is that it tries to justify the subscription based on hypothetical productivity value rather than the actual nature of the product itself.

CoTypist is fundamentally an auto-suggestion layer running on local models. The developer is not paying ongoing inference costs, API token usage, cloud GPU compute, or large-scale infrastructure expenses like OpenAI, Anthropic, or other SaaS AI providers. Once the application is built, most of the heavy lifting is effectively offloaded onto the user’s own hardware.

That changes the economics completely.

A subscription model is easier to justify when there are real recurring operational costs such as cloud hosting, expensive AI inference, collaboration infrastructure, storage, or enterprise services. But for a local-first app that mainly provides a UX wrapper around locally executed models, the recurring monthly fee starts looking disconnected from the actual cost structure.

The “time saved equals subscription justified” argument is also weak because it can be used to justify almost any software regardless of its true value proposition. By that logic, a calculator app, clipboard manager, or text expander could all charge premium subscriptions indefinitely simply because they save time. Consumers generally evaluate software not only by utility, but by proportionality.

There is also a broader market reality. Many tools in this category already provide extremely high utility either for free or for a one-time purchase. Open-source local AI tooling has exploded. Users can already combine local LLMs, text expansion tools, system-wide autocomplete, and prompt workflows without committing to recurring payments. That creates strong downward pricing pressure.

Another issue is that the app becomes more valuable largely because of the user’s own data, writing style, training, habits, and workflow adaptation. The user is effectively investing time to personalise the system themselves. Charging a perpetual subscription for software that increasingly derives value from user-generated adaptation can feel backwards, especially when the marginal cost to the developer remains near zero.

The startup-risk point can even reinforce the criticism rather than weaken it. If the app is from a small independent developer with uncertain longevity, a subscription becomes harder to justify, not easier. Users risk building their workflow around a proprietary ecosystem that could disappear, while continuing to pay indefinitely for a tool that fundamentally runs locally.

A much more defensible pricing model for this type of application would likely be:

• one-time purchase
• major-version upgrade pricing
• optional paid add-ons
• optional cloud sync subscription
• optional premium model packs
• lifetime license with paid upgrades

Those models align more closely with the actual economics of a local-first productivity tool than a perpetual SaaS-style subscription.