AI startup Augment scraps 'unsustainable' pricing, users say new model is 10x worse

Augment has updated its pricing model for Augment Code, an AI coding assistant, to be based on AI usage rather than message interactions. The company said its existing model "isn't sustainable" but users have calculated that the new one is more than ten times as expensive.

The startup was launched in April 2024, co-founded by Igor Ostrovsky (ex-Microsoft software engineer) and Guy Gur-Ari (ex-Google AI research), and backed by venture capital including investment from Eric Schmidt (former Google CEO). Its main product is Augment Code, which provides AI-powered chat, Next Edit code suggestions, inline code completions, and agentic AI programming, which can create an app from scratch.

Popular features in Augment Code include a Memories feature that persists context across conversations, and a 200K context window, meaning the AI is better informed about the codebase it is asked to work on.

The price increase follows an earlier hike just ...