On 14 September 2026 we removed the free trial. Deepest is now paid from the first prompt, with a 30-day money-back guarantee on subscriptions and unspent credit-pack credits refundable for 90 days. This is the reasoning, including the parts that do not flatter us.
The honest version of why
The usual story a startup tells here is about focus, or serious users, or product-market fit. The actual reason is simpler: every answer Deepest produces costs real money at the moment it is produced, and a free tier meant paying customers were funding people who had no intention of becoming customers.
That is a defensible trade if enough free users convert. Ours did not, and a meaningful share of the free usage came from accounts created specifically to consume the allowance and leave, sometimes repeatedly with new addresses. Every hour spent building defences against that was an hour not spent on the product.
We could have shrunk the trial instead. We decided a small trial is the worst of both worlds: too little to evaluate the product honestly, still enough to farm, and it keeps the whole apparatus of abuse detection in place for a diminished benefit.
What we did instead of a trial
Removing a trial without replacing the reassurance it provided would just move the problem. A trial answers a fair question: how do I know this is worth paying for before I pay?
Our answer is to put the risk on us rather than on our costs.
- 30 days on subscriptions. Subscribe, use it properly, and if it is not useful, email us within 30 days of your first payment for a full refund.
- 90 days on credit packs. Buy a pack instead of a subscription and whatever you have not spent comes back, refundable from your settings without emailing anyone.
- Credits that roll over. Unused monthly credits carry into the next month, capped at one month's allowance. We do not confiscate what you paid for.
The difference between this and a trial is who carries the cost of the uncertainty. With a trial, we pay for everyone's evaluation, including the people who were never going to buy. With a refund, we pay only for the people we failed to convince, which is the right group to be paying for.
Existing trials were honoured
Anyone who already had trial credits when this changed kept them. We did not claw anything back or shorten anyone's window. The change applies to accounts created from the cutoff onward, and the last grandfathered trials expire on their own schedule.
That was not a difficult decision, but it is the kind of thing that quietly gets skipped when a pricing change ships under time pressure, so it is worth stating that it did not.
What this means if you are evaluating us
You will be asked to pay before you have seen the product work on your own material. That is a genuine cost to you and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
What you get for it is a product that is not quietly optimising against you. There is no engagement-maximising loop, no reason for us to make the free tier just annoying enough to convert, and no incentive to degrade the paid experience to protect the free one. You pay for what you use, you can see what it costs before you send it, and if it does not work out you ask for your money back.
We would rather be judged on that than on how generous our free tier looks.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I try Deepest without a subscription?
Yes. A credit pack starts at $5 and is not a subscription, so nothing recurs. Unspent credits are refundable for 90 days directly from your settings. That is the lowest-commitment way in.
What if I subscribe and it is not for me?
Email us within 30 days of your first payment and we refund it in full. No usage threshold, no argument, no retention call.
Is there any guest or no-account mode?
No, and there will not be. Every prompt costs us money at the moment it runs, and an anonymous mode is impossible to protect from exactly the abuse that made the free trial unsustainable.
Do unused credits expire?
Monthly plan credits roll over into the following month, capped at one full month's allowance, so you can start a month with up to double your plan's credits. Credits bought in a pack do not expire.
