The Logic Pro assistant on a MacBook Pro, in a press image from Apple’s October 27, 2026 Creator Studio announcement. Image: Apple
Apple has started charging for extra AI. Apple Creator Studio subscribers who run through their monthly allowance of AI features can now buy an “intelligence usage pack”, a one-time purchase Apple sets out in a new support document. The only pack on offer costs $49.99, 9to5Mac found in the latest Logic Pro update, and Apple doesn’t say how much usage that buys.
It is the first time Apple has put a price on extra use of its AI features, which have so far come free with its devices or inside a subscription.
What the $49.99 pack gets you
Apple’s rules for the packs are short:
- One-time purchase: not a subscription. All sales are final, with no refunds except where the law requires them.
- Only after the cap: extra usage is drawn down only once you hit your monthly limit, and only for the relevant features.
- Rolls over: unused usage carries from month to month and expires 12 months after purchase.
- One account: no Family Sharing; the pack works only for the Apple Account you were using for iCloud when you bought it.
For now the packs can be bought only in Logic Pro for Mac: choose Logic Pro in the menu bar, then Intelligence Features, Show Usage and Buy More Usage. The same menu shows your usage history. 9to5Mac expects the packs to reach Final Cut Pro, Pixelmator Pro and Apple’s iWork apps when the rest of Creator Studio’s November AI update arrives later this month. Keynote, Pages, Numbers, Freeform and Pixelmator Pro already have a Show Usage option.
What the monthly limit covers
Apple says the exact allowance varies with how complex your requests are and with server and network availability. At a minimum, each month, if you used only one feature, you can:
- generate 50 images
- generate 250 shapes
- generate 50 presentations of about 8 to 10 slides each
- generate presenter notes for 700 slides
The Logic Pro assistant gets no figure at all: Apple says its limit depends on “the complexity of conversations you have with the assistant”.
The same page names the companies behind the features. Generate Presentation and the slide images it makes are powered by OpenAI. The Logic Pro assistant, image, shape and presenter notes features are powered by Google Gemini. That is a change from October, when Apple described the Logic Pro assistant as “powered by a combination of Apple-built models and OpenAI”. Apple hasn’t said why the two descriptions differ. It says neither provider stores requests or trains on them.
Eight countries, for now
The packs are on sale only to active Creator Studio subscribers in Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Mexico, the UK and the US. Subscribers anywhere else who hit the cap have to wait for it to reset the next month. Creator Studio itself costs $12.99 a month or $129 a year in the US, with local prices in each App Store.
The Logic Pro assistant has tighter limits of its own: it needs a Mac with Apple silicon running macOS 27 and works in US English only. The Gemini-powered features are not available in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Russia, Belarus or Venezuela, among other places.
Is the rest of Apple Intelligence next?
Apple has been signalling for months that some of its AI will cost money. At WWDC in June it said that features relying on its server models have daily limits and that “increased access is available with most iCloud+ subscription plans”.
Its usage limits page, published in September as iOS 27 arrived, goes further. It lists Siri AI, the Clean Up, Extend and Spatial Reframing photo tools, Image Playground, the AFM 3 Cloud models in Shortcuts and developer apps using Apple’s models in Private Cloud Compute, and says Apple will put usage limits on “these and other Apple Intelligence and Siri AI features” in future. Its last line: “Increased access to such features will be available for a fee.” The page doesn’t mention iCloud+ for that extra access, only for AI video summaries from Home cameras.
Apple hasn’t said whether paid Siri AI would come as packs like these, higher iCloud+ tiers or both, or when. With Siri AI now open to every app, it is the feature most likely to push people into a limit.
Why it matters
Rivals sell AI by monthly plan with usage caps that reset; Apple is trying one-off top-ups on top of a subscription instead. The first packs only touch a pro bundle in eight countries, but they set the template for charging for Siri AI, and Apple still won’t say what $49.99 actually buys.
Sources: Apple Support: About the intelligence features in Apple Creator Studio (November 5, 2026); Apple Support: Learn about Apple Intelligence usage limits; Apple Newsroom (June 2026); 9to5Mac (pack price)
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