I built a native 𝗠𝗮𝗰 𝗔𝗜 𝗮𝗽𝗽 with lifetime access — is one-time pricing better than another subscription?

Hey Indie Hackers, I’m Faiq, an indie Mac developer.

I recently launched Cloudia Chat, a native macOS AI assistant. I built it because most AI tools I used on Mac felt like expensive browser tabs, and I wanted something that feels more at home on macOS.

What it does:

💬 AI chat assistant
🔍 Web search for real-time answers
🔬 Deep research for multi-source answers
📄 PDF, DOCX and TXT document analysis
🖼️ Image analysis
🕘 Chat history
🖥️ Native Mac-style interface

The pricing experiment is the main thing I’m testing right now.

Instead of only forcing a monthly subscription, I added:

• Weekly plan for light users
• Monthly plan
• Yearly plan
• Lifetime plan for people who want to pay once and keep using it

A lot of AI tools are around $20/month, and I’m curious whether Mac users prefer a native Mac app with flexible pricing instead.

I’d love feedback from Mac users:

Would you personally prefer a native Mac AI app with lifetime access, or do you still prefer using AI tools in the browser?

App Store Link: https://apps.apple.com/app/cloudia-chat-ask-ai-anything/id6767834404