# Pricing

> The clai CLI is free and open source. The clai.chat Hub and config sync are free. Synced conversations cost $1 per GB a month.

Canonical URL: https://www.clai.chat/pricing/

Full site index: https://www.clai.chat/llms.txt

The `clai` CLI is free and open source, and so are the Hub and syncing your
config. Synced conversations cost $1 per GB a month.

## Local CLI

$0. Run the open-source `clai` binary on your own machine with your own LLM
vendor API keys or local Ollama models. The CLI needs no account and sends
nothing to `clai.chat` until you run `clai cloud login`. See
[Installation](/docs/installation/) and the [Quickstart](/docs/quickstart/).

## Hub and config sync

$0, no card, no trial. On the [Hub](/hub/):

- Read and download any published config without an account.
- [Sign in](/login) with GitHub, Google or a code sent to your email to
  publish a config.
- Rate a config from one to five stars: one rating per account, never your
  own.
- Withdraw a config you published, any time.

The Hub holds six kinds of config: profiles, MCP servers, shell contexts,
skills, themes and prompts. See
[Share and rate configs](/docs/guides/community-hub/).

With `clai cloud login`, your profiles, MCP servers, shell contexts, skills,
mode configs and theme sync across your machines for free, up to 1 GB,
git-style:
`clai cloud pull` and `clai cloud commit` move them, nothing moves on its
own. A config that holds an API key is skipped, never uploaded.

## Conversation sync

$1 per GB a month, billed on the month's highest conversation storage and
rounded up to whole GB, so any conversation storage is at least $1 a month.
A month with no synced conversations costs nothing. A card goes on file on
[Billing and usage](/login) before your first conversation commit.
Conversations clai imported from other tools are committed only with
`--imports`, and then count like any other.

| Peak storage           | You pay |
| ---------------------- | ------- |
| Config only            | $0      |
| 40 MB of conversations | $1      |
| 1 GB                   | $1      |
| 1.4 GB                 | $2      |
| 10 GB                  | $10     |

If a payment fails, Stripe retries it for 7 days. After that, commits are
refused until it is paid, but pulls keep working. After 30 days unpaid, your
synced conversations are deleted. Your config store is never
trimmed, and the copies on your machines stay until their next pull.

## Questions

### Do I need an account to read a config?

No. Every Hub page and every raw config file is public.

### What does an account hold?

Your email, the sessions that keep you signed in, the configs you published,
the ratings you gave, your CLI logins and what you commit. See
[Privacy](/privacy/).

### What happens when I delete my account?

Your published configs, every rating you gave or received and your synced
stores are deleted with it, and a card subscription is cancelled at once. See
[Privacy](/privacy/) for the full list.

### Is there a hosted sync or backup service?

Yes, and it is opt-in: nothing syncs until you log in and run
`clai cloud commit`. Your API keys stay on your machine.

## Priced to last, not to extract

I'm deliberately not pricing clai.chat to get as much as I can out of the
people who use it. I'd rather trust that careful engineering, an
implementation that's cheap to run, and fair service are worth more than
maximising profit. Config costs almost nothing to store, so it's free.
Conversations grow without end, so they cost roughly what keeping them
costs. The goal is for clai.chat to pay for itself, and keep running.

Lorentz, who builds clai