Raycast
Keyboard-first Mac launcher that folds apps, files, extensions, and an AI agent into one command bar
If you live on a Mac and reach for the mouse a handful of times a day, Raycast is the highest-leverage install you can make — the $0 plan alone beats most paid launchers, and the shared Free tier still includes thousands of community extensions for whole teams. Pay for Pro ($8/mo billed annually, $10/mo monthly) only when you'll genuinely spend AI credits on Chat, Agents, or Quick AI — and check whether a cheaper model like Ollama or Groq covers your case before paying for top-tier models. Alfred users get more extension depth; Spotlight users get more extensibility. Windows users should stay on the beta until the AI and extension gaps close.
Verified 8d ago · liveness 97/100 · cite: rightaichoice.com/tools/raycast
- Mac-based developers who launch apps, search files and run scripts without leaving the keyboard
- Designers juggling Figma, Notion and CleanShot X from one command bar
- Founders and operators triaging tasks across Linear, Jira and Todoist with AI Chat and Agents
- Teams standardizing shared snippets, quicklinks and commands with admin controls
- Windows users who need full feature parity — that release is still a public beta
- People who prefer mouse-driven interfaces and rarely use keyboard shortcuts
- Anyone who only needs basic app launching and won't touch extensions or AI
We scan live Reddit threads, YouTube comments, X posts, G2 reviews and other communities — and hand you an honest verdict in under a minute.
- Honest verdict, not marketing
- Real pros & cons from real users
- Attributed quotes with receipts
3 free scans · no card needed
Skip Raycast if you need full Windows parity today — Windows is still a public beta — or if your workflow must run on-premise with no cloud model calls.
Top-tier AI models are locked to Pro+ (3,000 credits) and Max (7,500 credits) and are excluded from the free Pro trial, so trialing on Pro models won't show you the real ceiling.
Free covers solo users and small teams fully — including organizational use and the public Extension Store. Pro at $8/mo billed annually ($10/mo monthly) is priced under most AI-native chat subscriptions, but only includes 500 credits; Pro+ and Max step up for heavy agent users. Teams Pro at $12/user/mo billed annually ($15/user/mo monthly) undercuts enterprise launcher suites, while Teams Free gives up to 5 shared commands, 30 quicklinks and 30 snippets with no seat cap.
In short
Raycast — Keyboard-first Mac launcher that folds apps, files, extensions, and an AI agent into one command bar. Best for Mac-based developers who launch apps, search files and run scripts without leaving the keyboard, Designers juggling Figma, Notion and CleanShot X from one command bar, Founders and operators triaging tasks across Linear, Jira and Todoist with AI Chat and Agents. Free to start; paid plans from $8/mo.
What's new in Raycast
Checked 8 days agoAcross the latest 4 updates: 1 feature update, 1 launch, 1 pricing change and 1 changelog entry.
Raycast 2.5: Extensions can provide their own AI models
Install a compatible extension from the Store, complete its setup, and choose its models in AI Chat. Ollama AI, AI by Vercel, Cerebras, Groq and LM Studio extensions were updated.
Raycast 2.4 adds macOS Golden Gate UI support
All interfaces updated for macOS Golden Gate with new sidebars, toolbars and Liquid Glass updates. No major new features; mostly fixes and polish.
Raycast AI moves to AI Credits pricing
Raycast changed how Raycast AI is priced, introducing new plans with AI Credits so AI can work through longer tasks autonomously.
Glaze opens to everyone
Glaze, Raycast's AI desktop app builder, exited private beta and is generally available — describe what you want and it builds a real desktop app.
Viability Score
How well maintained and how widely used is Raycast? Built from what the vendor actually publishes (docs, changelog, tutorials, integrations, pricing), whether the site is live, and how much real users discuss it. How we calculate this
Last calculated: October 2026
How we score →Key Features
- Keyboard-first launcher for apps, files, and web search
- Public Extension Store with thousands of community extensions
- Extensions can supply their own AI models, selectable in AI Chat (v2.5)
- Raycast AI: Quick AI on a single hotkey
- AI Chat with Agents that act across connected tools
- AI Extensions connecting everyday tools to the agent
- AI Commands for automating repetitive text tasks
- Screen Awareness and Memory in AI Chat
- Bring Your Own Key and custom AI providers on paid plans
- Dictation (Ctrl + M in composers) and Translator on Pro and above
- Cloud sync for settings, plus custom themes and profiles
- Snippets, quicklinks, hotkeys and aliases
- Clipboard history (3 months free, unlimited on Pro)
- Window management with tiling and custom commands
- Raycast Notes for quick capture (5 notes free, unlimited on Pro)
About Raycast
Raycast replaces Spotlight, Alfred, and a stack of single-purpose utilities with one keyboard-driven command bar. Type a few letters and you're in an app, a file, a window layout, a calculation, a clipboard item, a snippet, or a chat with AI. The free tier is unusually complete: clipboard history (3 months), snippets, quicklinks, calculator, window management, Raycast Notes (5 notes), and the entire public Extension Store, whose listings cover Linear, Jira, Slack, Notion, Spotify, Todoist, Obsidian, 1Password, Google Chrome, Arc, Zoom, CleanShot X, and thousands more. Paid plans add the AI layer — Quick AI on a single hotkey, AI Chat with Agents, AI Commands, AI Extensions, Screen Awareness, Memory, dictation, translator, cloud sync, and custom themes — metered in monthly AI credits. A pricing change on 2026-09-10 moved Raycast AI to AI Credits so the agent can run through longer tasks autonomously. Raycast 2.5 (2026-09-28) lets extensions ship their own AI models, so Ollama, AI by Vercel, Cerebras, Groq and LM Studio models can be picked directly in AI Chat. Glaze, the describe-an-app-and-it-builds-it tool, left private beta on 2026-07-01. It is macOS-first with an iOS app and a public Windows beta, so cross-platform parity remains the known gap.
Behind the Verdict
Raycast's core bet is that the launcher is the right place to live, and the product earns that bet through breadth rather than novelty. The free tier is the strongest argument: window management, clipboard history, snippets, quicklinks, calculator, file search, notes, and the full public Extension Store all cost nothing, and the vendor explicitly says the Free and Teams Free plans are licensed for organizational use, not just personal tinkering. If your team has been standardizing on Alfred or Spotlight because 'the launcher is a personal thing,' that objection no longer holds — Teams Free bundles up to 5 shared commands, 30 shared quicklinks, and 30 shared snippets with no seat cap. The paid layer is where the product has moved fastest, and where the buyer needs to read carefully. Raycast AI is not sold separately: there is no Pro-without-AI plan, though you can switch AI off entirely in Settings. Pro bundles 500 AI credits a month, Pro+ 3,000, Max 7,500, and the vendor's own pricing FAQ notes that each model spends credits at its own rate, so cheaper models go further. Top-up packs carry over and never expire, and Bring Your Own Key is supported on paid plans — worth weighing against top-tier model access, which is reserved for Pro+ and Max and, per the pricing FAQ, is excluded from the free Pro trial. Raycast's 2026-09-10 pricing change to AI Credits is explicitly framed around letting the agent run through longer multi-step tasks autonomously, which is the right direction for an agentic tool but also the direction that makes usage harder to predict. Platform breadth is the honest weakness. macOS is the main event, iOS exists, and Windows is a public beta; the vendor's own copy still calls it a beta, and the recommendation to wait is ours, not theirs. Anyone who needs Windows parity today is buying a moving target. The other real constraint is scale: heavy AI users on top-tier models will burn 500 credits quickly, and the jump from Pro to Pro+ is where the price curve starts to bite. Where Raycast genuinely differs from Alfred and Spotlight is that its automation surface is generative now, not just deterministic. Agents can act across connected tools, AI Commands automate repetitive text, AI Extensions wire everyday tools into the model, and Screen Awareness and Memory give the chat context beyond your typed prompt. With 2.5, extensions can even supply their own models, so a Groq or LM Studio user isn't locked to Raycast's own model menu. For a keyboard-first Mac user, that combination — free launcher, then an AI layer you can meter, top up, or self-supply — is a more honest deal than most AI-native tools offer.
Researching Raycast? Get your full AI stack in 60 seconds.
Free, no signup — tell us your goal and get tools matched to your budget & existing stack.
Real-world workflow fit
Concrete scenarios for the personas Raycast actually fits — and what changes day-one when you adopt it.
Installs Raycast on day one, replaces Spotlight, wires the Linear and GitHub extensions, and assigns a hotkey to Quick AI for error explanations. Later switches AI Chat to a local Ollama or LM Studio model supplied by an extension.
Outcome: App launching, issue triage and code explanations all happen from one keystroke; local models keep sensitive prompts off cloud providers.
Uses clipboard history and CleanShot X for screenshots, quicklinks to jump into Figma and Notion, and shared snippets for review responses. The team adopts Teams Pro so extensions and quicklinks are shared from the Private Store.
Outcome: The team stops alt-tabbing between five apps for small tasks, and onboarding new designers means installing one extension set instead of a documented toolchain.
Runs an AI Agent prompt asking it to check Linear for assigned tasks and create a matching task in Things for each one, then uses Screen Awareness and Memory so follow-up questions reference the same context.
Outcome: Cross-tool triage that used to be a manual sweep becomes one prompt; credits are the meter to watch on Pro.
Use Cases
- Create and search Notion pages without leaving the keyboard
- Triage Linear issues and create matching tasks in Things via an AI Agent run
- Manage Jira issues and sprints entirely from Raycast
- Translate text or dictate through Google Translate without switching apps
- Compress images in Finder with TinyPNG from the command bar
- Draft emails, code snippets, or document summaries with Quick AI
- Search open tabs, bookmarks and history in Chrome or Arc
- Stay in flow with snippets, quicklinks, clipboard history and window management
Models Under the Hood
as of 2026-09-15
Limitations
- Raycast AI only ships inside paid Pro plans; there is no Pro-without-AI tier, though you can disable AI entirely in Settings.
- Top-tier AI models are reserved for Pro+ (3,000 credits) and Max (7,500 credits) and are excluded from the free Pro trial, which covers Pro models only.
- AI usage is metered in monthly credits, and each model spends credits at its own rate, so the same workload costs different amounts depending on which model you pick; top-up packs never expire.
- Windows support was introduced as a public beta, and the vendor still labels it as such.
- On 2026-09-10 Raycast changed how AI is priced, moving to AI Credits with new plans, so anyone comparing to older price lists should re-check current terms.
- Recommended hardware specs are not stated in the available sources.
as of 2026-09-30
Verification history
We have re-verified Raycast 17 times since . Each pass re-reads the vendor's own pages and re-checks every listed field against that evidence; passes where nothing had changed are marked as such.
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
Showing the 6 most recent of 17 verification passes.
Free to cite with attribution — this page re-verifies continuously.
12-month cost
Project the real annual outlay, including the implied monthly cost when only an annual tier is published.
Vendor list price only. Add-on usage, seat overages, and contract minimums are surfaced under Hidden costs & gotchas.
Plans compared
For each published Raycast tier: who it actually fits, and what it adds vs. the previous tier. Cross-reference the cost calculator above for projected annual outlay.
Free
$0/mo
Ideal for
Solo Mac users and small teams who want the launcher, clipboard history, snippets, quicklinks and the full public Extension Store at no cost.
What this tier adds
Starting tier — 3 months of clipboard history, 5 Raycast Notes, and no AI features.
Pro
$8/mo (annual) / $10/mo (monthly)
Ideal for
Individual power users who will actually spend 500 AI credits a month on Quick AI, AI Chat, Agents and AI Commands.
What this tier adds
Adds Raycast AI with 500 monthly credits, unlimited clipboard history and notes, dictation, translator, cloud sync and custom themes.
Teams Free
$0/user/mo
Ideal for
Small teams testing shared workflows before committing per-seat spend — licensed for organizational use with no seat minimum or maximum.
What this tier adds
Everything in Free plus up to 5 shared commands, 30 shared quicklinks and 30 shared snippets per team.
Teams Pro
$12/user/mo (annual) / $15/user/mo (monthly)
Ideal for
Teams that need AI on every seat plus a shared Private Store and admin controls like SAML and SCIM.
What this tier adds
Adds 500 credits per user per month, unlimited shared commands, quicklinks and snippets, and a Private Store for team extensions.
Enterprise
Custom
Ideal for
Larger organizations that need governance over which AI models and providers employees can use.
What this tier adds
Adds the AI Control Center with organization-wide governance, AI allow-lists, IP restrictions and unlimited seats.
Where the pricing makes sense
The company stage and team size where Raycast's pricing actually pencils out — and where peers do it cheaper.
Free covers solo users and small teams fully — including organizational use and the public Extension Store. Pro at $8/mo billed annually ($10/mo monthly) is priced under most AI-native chat subscriptions, but only includes 500 credits; Pro+ and Max step up for heavy agent users. Teams Pro at $12/user/mo billed annually ($15/user/mo monthly) undercuts enterprise launcher suites, while Teams Free gives up to 5 shared commands, 30 quicklinks and 30 snippets with no seat cap.
Setup time & first value
How long it actually takes to get something useful out of Raycast — broken out by persona, not the marketing-page minute.
Install to first useful command is minutes — Raycast walks you through keyboard setup and replaces Spotlight on first launch. Getting the most out of it depends on how many extensions you wire: a developer standardizing Linear, Jira and GitHub can be fully set up in an afternoon, while a team rolling out Teams Pro with SCIM, SAML and a Private Store should budget a few days for admin controls and
Switching to or from Raycast
How to bring data in from common predecessors and how to get it back out — written for the switcher, not the buyer.
- →From Alfred: import your hotkeys and aliases, then replace workflows with Extension Store equivalents covering Linear, Jira, Notion and Chrome.
- →From Spotlight: disable Spotlight's shortcut and hand the command bar to Raycast — file search, calculator and app launching map directly.
- →From a personal launcher to a team setup: move to Teams Free to share up to 5 commands, 30 quicklinks and 30 snippets, then upgrade to Teams Pro for the Private Store and SCIM.
- →From macOS built-in shortcut tools: Raycast's snippets and quicklinks absorb repetitive typing and URL launches in one place.
- ↗To Alfred: export your snippets and quicklinks, then rebuild workflows manually since extension formats are not shared.
- ↗To Spotlight: turn Raycast's hotkey off, re-enable Spotlight, and expect to lose snippets, clipboard history and AI Chat.
- ↗To a Windows-native launcher: Raycast's public Windows beta is the only cross-platform option inside the product today, so leaving macOS means leaving most of the ecosystem.
Integrations
Resources & Guides
- Resourceraycast.com
Raycast Manual
The Raycast Manual – your shortcut to everything. From first launch to pro-level workflows, explore comprehensive guides to stay in flow across Mac, Windows, and iOS.
- Resourceraycast.com
Your shortcut to everything
A collection of powerful productivity tools all within an extendable launcher.
Tutorials & Learning
YouTube returned 6 videos for “Raycast”, and we withheld 6: 6 could not be judged, because “Raycast” is a single word that other videos use for other things. We are showing none, because we could not prove any of them are about Raycast.
Official links
Tools that pair well with Raycast
Common stack mates teams adopt alongside Raycast, with the specific reason each pairing earns its keep.
Slack
Slack is a channel-based work platform where your team, apps, and AI agents like Slackbot collaborate in shared conversations.
Granicus
Granicus is a public-sector citizen experience platform bundling service, engagement, operations, and destination marketing clouds with an AI resident agent.
Saner
Saner is an AI personal assistant for ADHD that turns emails, notes, to-dos, and files into one searchable Smart Inbox.
Alternatives to Raycast
View allSlack
Slack is a channel-based work platform where your team, apps, and AI agents like Slackbot collaborate in shared conversations.
Frequently Asked Questions
Categories
Best-of guides
Used Raycast? Help shape our editorial sentiment research.