Part 6 of the Heist Build Log. Most of this series has been about features. This one's about a decision — a pricing decision I went back and forth on for longer than I'd like to admit.
The easy, lucrative, slightly dishonest path
Every AI product faces the same fork early on: who pays for the AI?
The easy answer is "you eat the cost and bake it into the subscription." Charge a flat monthly fee, run the AI on your own keys behind the scenes, and mark it up. Customers love that it feels free at the point of use. It's the standard playbook.
It also has a quiet problem. The more your customers use the product, the more it costs you. So your incentives slowly turn against your best users. You start wanting people to use it less. You add caps. You throttle. You nudge heavy users toward "enterprise." The pricing page stops being honest because the underlying math is fighting the customer.
I didn't want to build a product where my best outcome was you using it less. That's a tool quietly rooting against you.
The harder choice: bring your own key
So I made a call that I knew would cost me some signups: in Heist, you bring your own AI key. Your AI, your bill.
You connect your own provider — and you can use whichever you prefer. The AI cost flows directly from the provider to you, at cost, with no markup from me. Heist charges for the product — the Brain, the publishing engine, the calendar, Autopilot, the connectors — not for reselling tokens with a margin stapled on.
Why this is better for you
- No markup. You pay the real cost of the AI, not my cost plus a margin.
- No artificial caps. Generate as much as you want. I have zero incentive to throttle you, because your usage isn't my bill.
- You control the model. Pick the provider and quality level that fits your work and budget.
- Honest, predictable pricing. You're paying for the software that saves you time, full stop. The pricing page and your interests point the same direction.
What it cost me to do the right thing
I'll be honest: "bring your own key" is a harder sell than "it's all included." It's one more setup step. Some people bounce at it. I felt that in the numbers, and I was tempted, more than once, to fold it back into a markup model.
I didn't, because the alternative meant building a company whose growth depended on customers not noticing the meter running. The whole premise of Heist is earning enough trust that you'll let it run your content while you're not watching. You can't ask for that kind of trust and quietly mark up every word it writes.
The bigger lesson
Pricing isn't just a number — it's a statement about whose side you're on. "Your AI, your bill" is me telling you, in the place it's hardest to fake, that I'd rather have a smaller, honest business than a bigger one built on a margin you're not supposed to think about.
It also means Heist scales with you. Use it more, get more value, and the only bill that grows is the one you pay your AI provider directly — at cost.
See the honest version of an AI tool
If you've ever felt a SaaS tool slowly turn against your own usage, you'll feel the difference here. Start a free trial, connect your key, and generate without watching a meter you don't control.
Next, the finale: the bet that you shouldn't even have to open Heist — that you should be able to run your whole content engine from inside ChatGPT or Claude.