Chris Harrison, director of the Future Interfaces Group at Carnegie Mellon University, doesn’t think the new subscription will help pay for Meta’s AI spending. “The industry has made enormous strides, even in the last six months, but certainly in the last 18 months, improving the efficiency of token generation and running these models much more efficiently,” Harrison says. “It’s not about recovering the costs of AI; it’s about monetizing customers.”

As adoption grows, Harrison says, this is a way to “extract value” from the platform. The company’s glasses are generally sold at cost price, such as the new $299 Meta brand glasses that ditch the stylish Ray-Ban brand for an even lower price. Harrison says this helps launch the glasses into the world and increases the user base; then the subscription service increases revenue.

But the danger of introducing subscription tiers is that a competitor comes along and offers all, if not most, of those features without charging users a monthly fee. One such competitor is just around the corner: Google will introduce its own smart glasses later this year, made in collaboration with Samsung and eyewear brands Warby Parker and Gentle Monster. There are no details on pricing or whether there will be a subscription tier, but Harrison says Google has shown how efficient it has become at running its AI models, and may be better prepared to absorb the cost rather than structuring features across pricing tiers.

That doesn’t mean that Google doesn’t have usage limits. On your Pixel phones, you need a specific level of the Google One subscription plan to use features like Video Boost, which sends your video footage to the Google cloud for improved lighting, color, stabilization, and noise reduction. Google’s Gemini chatbot is free to use, but if you want certain features, like Gemini Spark, you’ll need to subscribe. On the new Google Home Speaker, you need the Google Home Premium subscription to use the more conversational Gemini Live experience.

Apple is also rumored to be working on smart glasses and the company is not immune to usage limits. If you overuse the new AI photo editing features coming in iOS 27, you’ll need to subscribe to a higher level of iCloud+ to continue using them.

“All of these will have to offer value, or people will choose the free version,” says Harrison. And Meta must think that these features provide significant value. A feature like Conversation Focus – people with hearing impairments may find it could improve their quality of life.

“Is that worth $10 a month? Probably,” he says.