Assistant-UI pricing: how does Assistant Cloud Free (200 MAU) and Pro ($50/mo for 500 MAU + $0.10/extra MAU) work?

Assistant-UI Cloud pricing is designed around how many people actively use your chat experience each month, measured as Monthly Active Users (MAU). Understanding how the Free and Pro tiers work helps you estimate costs and choose the right plan for your project or product launch.

What is a Monthly Active User (MAU)?

A Monthly Active User (MAU) is typically defined as a unique end user who uses your Assistant-UI–powered chat within a given calendar month.

In practice, that usually means:

One person using your app on multiple devices = 1 MAU
The same person coming back many times in the same month = still 1 MAU
A new person using your app for the first time = a new MAU

Assistant-UI Cloud tracks MAUs to determine which pricing tier you fall under and whether you’re within your included allowance or paying overages.

Note: MAU usage here refers to Assistant-UI Cloud features (like stored threads, cloud-based state, etc.), not your LLM provider’s token or request usage. Those are billed separately by the model provider (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.).

How the Assistant Cloud Free plan (200 MAU) works

The Free tier is ideal for personal projects, prototypes, early-stage products, or small internal tools.

Key points of the Free plan:

Price: $0 / month
Included usage: Up to 200 MAU per month
Use case fit:
- Solo developers
- MVPs and internal demos
- Low-traffic or early-stage apps
Features:
You get access to Assistant-UI Cloud capabilities like:
- Persistent chat threads stored in Assistant-UI Cloud
- Multi-turn conversations that survive page refresh
- Production-ready chat UI behavior (streaming, interruptions, retries, state management)

When you’re on the Free plan, as long as you stay under 200 MAU in a given month, you pay nothing.

What happens if you exceed 200 MAU on Free?

Exact enforcement can vary by provider settings, but in most SaaS setups there are typically a few possibilities:

You may be prompted to upgrade to Pro once your usage consistently exceeds the free threshold.
Some providers soft-cap usage and show warnings in the dashboard.
In stricter setups, new sessions might be limited once you hit the cap.

In any case, if your project is consistently going beyond 200 MAU, you should plan to move to the Pro plan both for cost predictability and to avoid any potential caps or limits during growth.

How the Pro plan works: $50/mo for 500 MAU

The Pro plan is designed for apps heading toward production, early commercial launches, or teams with more serious usage.

Pro plan overview:

Base price: $50 / month
Base allowance: 500 MAU included
Overage: $0.10 per extra MAU, beyond 500

This structure keeps pricing predictable while giving you room to scale. You pay a flat monthly fee that covers a substantial user base, and then a simple per-user rate if you grow beyond that.

How overage pricing works

Once your monthly MAU exceeds 500 on Pro, each additional active user costs $0.10 for that month.

Formula:

If MAU ≤ 500:
Monthly cost = $50 flat
If MAU > 500:
Monthly cost = $50 + (MAU − 500) × $0.10

Example cost calculations

Here are some concrete scenarios to make the pricing feel tangible:

300 MAU in a month (Pro plan)
- 300 ≤ 500 → no overage
- Cost: $50 total
500 MAU in a month
- Exactly at the included allowance
- Cost: $50 total
650 MAU in a month
- Over by 150 users
- Overage: 150 × $0.10 = $15
- Cost: $50 + $15 = $65 total
1,000 MAU in a month
- Over by 500 users
- Overage: 500 × $0.10 = $50
- Cost: $50 + $50 = $100 total

This makes it easy to project costs as your app grows: for every 10 additional monthly active users beyond 500, you add about $1 per month.

Comparing Free vs Pro based on usage

Here’s a quick way to decide which tier fits your current situation.

When Free (200 MAU) is enough

Stay on the Free plan if:

You’re just starting with Assistant-UI.
Your app is in development, beta, or internal testing.
You expect only a small number of users or test sessions each month.
Predictability isn’t critical yet; you mainly want to keep the stack simple and cost-free.

When to upgrade to Pro (500 MAU + overage)

Consider Pro if:

You expect to exceed 200 MAU reliably.
You’re preparing for a public launch or production rollout.
You’re building for a team or organization with real end users.
You want the peace of mind of having a higher included limit and predictable scaling.

For many teams, the transition happens once a prototype starts seeing real usage and you want to avoid worrying about hitting the free limit in the middle of a critical demo or launch.

Estimating your MAU and monthly cost

Before choosing a plan, estimate your Monthly Active Users:

Projected user base
- How many unique people do you expect to use your chat in a given month?
Engagement pattern
- Are they daily power users or occasional visitors?
- Either way, each person still counts as 1 MAU for that month.
Growth curve
- Are you planning a large launch soon (newsletter, Product Hunt, or enterprise rollout)?

Sample projections

Side project or early-stage startup
- Expect 50–150 users trying the app:
  - Free plan is typically enough (under 200 MAU).
Early production app
- Expect 300–600 users per month:
  - Pro plan at $50/month, with possible small overages.
  - Example: 600 MAU → $60 total.
Growing product
- Expect 1,000+ users/month:
  - Pro plan with larger overages;
  - Example: 2,000 MAU → $50 + (1,500 × $0.10) = $200.

By mapping your growth scenarios, you can align your Assistant-UI Cloud plan with your expected user base.

What you get for the price: value of Assistant-UI Cloud

Beyond the pricing math, it’s useful to understand what you’re paying for:

Production-ready chat UX
Assistant-UI brings a ChatGPT-like interface directly into your React app: streaming messages, tool calls, retries, and more.
State management out of the box
Multi-turn conversations, interruptions, and context handling are handled for you, so you can focus on agent logic instead of UI plumbing.
Persistent sessions in the cloud
Threads are stored in Assistant-UI Cloud, so conversations persist across page refreshes and over time.
Works with your existing stack
- Vercel AI SDK
- LangChain
- LangGraph
- Any LLM provider

For most teams, this saves days or weeks of engineering time compared to building and maintaining a custom chat UI and state layer from scratch.

Choosing the right plan for your project

To decide between Assistant Cloud Free and Pro:

Estimate your MAU over the next 1–3 months.
Check your risk tolerance for hitting a free-tier limit.
Factor in time savings: if you’re going to production, Pro is usually worth it for stability and support.

Rule of thumb:

Just experimenting, internal demo, or very small user base → Free (200 MAU)
Launching or scaling an actual product with hundreds or thousands of users → Pro ($50/mo for 500 MAU + $0.10/extra MAU)

FAQ about Assistant-UI pricing and MAU

Does MAU count per app or per workspace/account?
Typically, MAU is counted per project/workspace in the cloud service. Check your dashboard or official docs to see how your specific setup aggregates MAUs.

Do I pay for MAU on top of LLM costs?
Yes. Assistant-UI Cloud pricing is separate from your LLM billing (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.). You’ll have:

Assistant-UI Cloud charges (based on MAU), and
Model/API charges (based on tokens, requests, or time).

What happens if I spike one month (e.g., launch week)?
Your MAU for that month may jump, which will increase the Pro overage portion. Use the formula:
$50 + (MAU − 500) × $0.10 to approximate launch-month cost.

By understanding how the Free 200 MAU tier and the Pro $50/month for 500 MAU plus $0.10 per extra MAU model works, you can confidently plan your budget, align your launch strategy, and scale your Assistant-UI–powered experience without surprises.