hi,
Vuforia beta 4 just ended, and they released the pricing:
Cannot continue using vuforia with those terms, prices, limits etc. (including extra fees for each reco over the plan…)
Are there any other proper AR sdk’s that work nicely with Unity?
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We are in the same situation. Working with AR for Museums, who cannot charge for the user downloading the App.
Minimum $99/mo ???
Are they gone completely mad???
Alternatives, yes please!
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I emailed them yesterday about their prices, asking for clarification, because it makes no sense. No reply yet.
I just found this website that has a list for AR SDKs with several listed as Unity ready:
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I saw there prices and it’s ridiculous. AR isn’t as big as VR is at the moment, but there prices are like it’s made out of diamonds. I’m sure, they killed AR now, at least for lot of indie developers that were trying to give AR a chance and develop cool things with it to sell.
Emailed also about the internal app license, no reply yet… will have to check that list.
Personally we’d just need offline, single marker tracking, no clouds or other extras, and one time license purchase (even if that is somewhat “expensive” and have to pay to upgrade in next versions or extra features…)
Small hope that something will change,
https://developer.vuforia.com/forum/license-manager/vuforia-40-licensing-discussion#comment-2047824
*going through the alternatives with unity plugins:
AR-Media prices/features: http://dev.inglobetechnologies.com/buy/
The best alternative is the Metaio SDK. There is a Unity plugin plus they are offering a 20% software discount right now (convenient timing?) with the code NEWDEV20
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That’s insane 
Monthly reco usage is a rip off, 5 sec and then it’s a new reco?! Looked at Mataio before and going to revert to them again, at least it’s free for the offline apps.
The way it’s written sounds absolutely insane. Surely they can’t really expect that that’s acceptable?
I have to think that 5,000 recos means “cloud recos”, and they just aren’t being clear. Surely they don’t charge for offline recos with a database in the app?
Hopefully they’ll clear this up soon.
@wccrawford1 nope, offline recos also counted 
i am a small agency, i simply can’t afford it.
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Metaio SDK licensing does look straight forward.
http://www.in2ar.com/index.php looks like a potential, but I couldn’t find pricing.
Interesting side note, PointCloud, had a free SDK, but was recently acquired by Facebook to join Oculus.
Got some news from Qualcomm:
In order to address your concerns, we will be providing an additional pricing option - the Classic plan. This plan will include unlimited device-based recos for multiple target types including images, multi-targets, cylinders, user-defined targets, frame markers, and text.
We’ll offer the Classic plan for a one-time fee of $499 per app, and it’s available now. To sign up, please contact the Sales Team directly. We’ll get it on the web site as soon as we can. Thank you again for your support of Vuforia. We highly value our relationship with you as developers, colleagues, friends, and business partners.
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^ yeah that doesnt sound so bad anymore,
https://developer.vuforia.com/forum/vuforia-40/vuforia-40-pricing-update
Metaio does give unlimited apps for single payment though…
Its heartbreaking what has happened to augmented reality. I’ve been playing with AR frameworks for years and was expecting some open-source framework to be developed, or for openCV to add AR functionality. Instead, its becoming more expensive 
Clients were already hesitant to use it and large costs weren’t helping to convince them. With all the money we are asked to cough up for AR, we might as well pool our skills together to try and come up with an open-source framework ourselves.
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The worse thing about those pricing announcements is the lost of trust in Vuforia.
I have a very bad feeling to work on a platform which is incalculable.
Only if the Vuforia team rolls back to the old business model immediately I could reconsider this platform for any further development.
Anything else is out of discussion.
We are already testing Metaio and Wikitude.
Same here. This is the first time I properly checked out the Metaio website. Even a high once-off payment to Metaio is better than any kind of recurring payment.
Looks like it’s contagious…
http://catchoom.com/product/craftar/pricing/
Was alerted by Vuforia new pricing paradigm as well - luckily, if you don’t require Cloud Recognition and all your target images / multi-targets are local you only need to pay a one time $499 to remove the water mark.
…per App, right?
Yes but form the other options its still the best, but creasy high in comparison to the old plans.
Sadly it seem the only option sine there is no other option out there that woks that good inside unity.