Merlin AI Pro (Unlimited) Plan Reality: $100 Monthly Cap
in progress
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Kent
Hello. The term "unlimited" in Merlin AI's Pro Plan is misleading, as the plan is subject to a fair use policy. If a user's usage exceeds $16 per day or $100 per month, their account gets suspended for the remainder of that day or month with the warning: "Your account has been paused since you have exceeded fair usage limits for this month. This pause is to ensure the fair usage of our services for all pro users." (https://www.getmerlin.in/terms-and-conditions)
I'm wondering, with the best offer discount to "Get Merlin Pro for just $5 per month," will the maximum usage limits of $16 per day or $100 per month still apply to accounts, or will they be reduced even further? I don't think anyone would want to use a service without clear metrics for credit consumption with AI models and without transparent comparisons showing how it outperforms direct API access. When comparing the original price of $19-29 per month for maximum usage not exceeding $16 per day or $100 per month, it's really NOT worth it compared to other services like Poe and Monica AI.
If we break it down (from $100 per month), does this mean users can't use more than $5 worth of credits daily before their account gets suspended? That level of usage is still far below what would qualify as "Abusive or extreme usage may result in account restriction or termination" as stated in the Pro (Unlimited) plan description.
Let me provide an example: Poe offers approximately 2,906 messages with Claude 3.5 Sonnet for a $20 subscription (1M points) per month.
Although Merlin AI doesn't explicitly publish how many credits are included in the Pro (Unlimited) plan (which is precisely what makes this ambiguous), we can use your previous AppSumo Lifetime plan highest tier as a reference point, which provided 20K credits monthly. With Claude 3.5 Sonnet consuming 25 credits per use (without web access enabled), this equates to roughly 20K/25 = ~800 messages in total. Any reasonable user would clearly see whether subscribing to Poe for $20 or Merlin AI for $19 offers better value.
About your claim that Merlin delivers "$130 worth of value for just $19!" - Where's the evidence (actual data, research, or calculation method) supporting this specific number? You should stop such excessive advertising or create a comparison table similar to what Poe has done on their website with "Direct API Costs vs Poe" to demonstrate actual service superiority, rather than simply claiming your value is based on "All-in-one access to AI" and "20x more messages than ChatGPT."
V
Vijay Bharadwaj
in progress
Working on an updated pricing page.
V
Vijay Bharadwaj
Hi Kent, I understand your frustration with Merlin Pro's limits being ambiguous. I'll first answer some of your questions:
You asked "I'm wondering, with the best offer discount to "Get Merlin Pro for just $5 per month," will the maximum usage limits of $16 per day or $100 per month still apply to accounts, or will they be reduced even further?"
-> Our T&C says "For accounts with applicable promotional discounts, the monthly usage limit will be around proportionally lower (versus $100), as per the discounted price of that offer." So, it does get reduced for lower price subscriptions.
You said "If we break it down (from $100 per month), does this mean users can't use more than $5 worth of credits daily before their account gets suspended? That level of usage is still far below what would qualify as "Abusive or extreme usage may result in account restriction or termination" as stated in the Pro (Unlimited) plan description."
-> That is, if you work equally everyday. I understand why you may feel that calling a $5 daily usage unfair is a little undeserved. But $5 gets you 100-200 decently-sized Claude queries. In a day. This extended to a month is clearly more than the competitors you quote at a similar price point.
You said "...we can use your previous AppSumo Lifetime plan highest tier as a reference point, which provided 20K credits monthly"
-> AppSumo plans are one-time payment plans and are not even remotely comparable to the Pro plan and the access it provides. In fact, we offer AppSumo users upgrades to Pro for a recurring price and Tier 3 users are the highest takers of the Pro upgrade -- which means Tier 3 users clearly understand what they're getting for that extra money.
You said "Poe offers approximately 2,906 messages with Claude 3.5 Sonnet for a $20 subscription (1M points) per month."
-> According to my calculations, 2906 messages amount to $30 of usage, based on their definition of a message (a total of 1000 tokens). We do $100 per month.
(Continued below)
V
Vijay Bharadwaj
You said "You should stop such excessive advertising or create a comparison table similar to what Poe has done on their website with "Direct API Costs vs Poe" to demonstrate actual service superiority"
-> That's a good idea, but our focus going forward is not just giving people access to different AI models, but rather build meaningful application layer features (like Crafts, Projects, Plugins, Tasks, App Integrations etc). If a product prides itself on giving you more access than the API provider would, then that means they're not adding enough value on top of the AI models, and are merely just an aggregator -- in my personal opinion.
Where's the evidence (actual data, research, or calculation method) supporting this specific number?
-> $130 is the sum total of dollars based on number of subscriptions you can replace, in terms of functionality. You can analyse CSVs and create Artifacts like Claude does, generate great images with high quality models using Bonkers, use features like Tasks and Deep Research (coming soon), use multiple AI models and do amazing search with our Live Search feature. We're clearly replacing a lot of subscriptions here.
Here's what we're going to do -- we're updating our Pricing page to reflect what you get more clearly. It's already in the works for a while, it'll go live soon. However, we can't include comparisons to Poe, since that would be in bad faith, and we don't want to misrepresent them unintentionally.
Hope this helps :) If you have more questions, please feel free to start a conversation at vj@foyer.work