Skywork AI Review

I signed up for the free plan, landed on the dashboard with 120 credits, and set out to answer one question: how much of the product can a new user try before hitting the paywall? The answer turned out to be less than two tasks.

First Look at the Dashboard

The home screen is cleaner than I expected from a tool that does this many things. A single prompt box sits at the top, with a slash command for skills and an @ shortcut for referencing files. Below it, the output types are laid out as chips: Websites, Slides, Documents, Posters, Sheets, Videos, plus Scheduled Tasks and an All Skills catalogue. The model selector defaults to Auto Model, so Skywork picks the underlying engine for you.

The left rail shows how far the product has sprawled. Skywork Design and Skywork Video sit alongside Skywork Note, a transcription product tied to the company’s recorder hardware, and there is a Connect IM Channel option for WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord and a few other messaging apps.

The credit counter in the top-right corner reads 120. Keep an eye on that number.

Test 1: A Research Report in Documents

The Documents skill with my research brief typed in, before spending a single credit.

I chose the Documents skill and asked for a concise research report on the rise of sustainable fashion, covering industry trends, consumer behaviour, environmental challenges and innovative materials, with an executive summary and a comparison table. Skywork offers preset formats here (Research Report, Academic Essay, Business Plan, Lesson Plan and several more), but I typed the brief myself to see how it handles a free-form request.

The report came back with a structure that matched the brief. It opened with an executive summary, followed by six key findings, a section on regulation, a comparison table covering recycled, certified, cellulosic, and bio-fabricated materials, an outlook through 2030, and a methodology and limitations note with seven linked references. It even stamped the document with a research cut-off date of 15 September 2026, the day I ran it.

The citations are what impressed me. Each key finding carries numbered inline references. One finding states that fibre production rose from about 125 million tonnes in 2023 to 132 million tonnes in 2024, with polyester at 59% of output. Another cites a PwC survey of more than 20,000 consumers across 31 countries where 80% said they would pay more for sustainable goods, at an average premium of 9.7%, alongside PwC’s own caveat that cost-of-living pressure can stop that intent from becoming spend. These are specific, checkable claims rather than vague generalities, and the source links let you verify them.

Then I looked at the credit counter. It read zero. One document had consumed the entire free balance.

Test 2: A Sales Spreadsheet in Sheets

For the second test I switched to the Sheets skill with a much smaller brief: a sales spreadsheet for a clothing store with 10 sample transactions, columns for Date, Product, Category, Quantity, Price and Total Sales, a total calculation, and a summary block at the top. I wanted to see whether a simple task costs less than a research-heavy one.

The output was a proper .xlsx file, opened in an embedded spreadsheet editor with a full ribbon (Home, Insert, Formulas, Data, and the rest). The summary block reported 10 transactions, 16 units sold, total sales of $758.09, and an average transaction of $75.81. The transaction table had filter dropdowns on each column header and a grand total row, with a “sample data for demonstration purposes” note underneath. Structurally, it was exactly what I asked for.

The cost was 102 credits, leaving 18 from a fresh balance of 120. A ten-row spreadsheet cost almost as much as a fully cited research report.

The Download Paywall

Before I signed up, I spent an evening reading what other people had to say about Skywork. The pattern that emerged is unusual for an AI tool. Almost nobody argues that the product does not work. Almost everybody who left a public complaint is angry about money.

The Trustpilot Picture

Skywork’s Trustpilot profile sits at 1.5 out of 5. When I checked, the review count was in the low forties, and around nine in ten of those reviews were one star. The profile is unclaimed, which means the company has never solicited reviews there, so every entry comes from someone who went looking for a place to warn others.

Four of the five reviews captured below were posted within the two weeks before I wrote this section. This is a live problem, not a legacy one.

The Trial-to-Charge Complaints

A user from Singapore reported being billed USD 399.90 instantly for an annual plan with no explicit purchase confirmation. They describe an unsubscribe button that is hard to find on the website, the same problem inside the mobile app, no way to unlink a payment method once the trial has started, and a support team that answered with automated replies. Their advice to others was to skip support entirely and go straight to the card issuer for a chargeback.

A user in Poland paid $1 for a one-month trial and, three days later, saw a $99 debit for a subscription they say they never agreed to.

A user in South Korea signed up for the 7-day trial and was charged 572,843 KRW, more than $400, for an annual plan on 5 September 2026. They state they had used zero credits since the charge and had sent several emails with proof of non-usage without receiving a reply.

A user in the United States cancelled the service and continued to be billed for it.

These four accounts describe the same mechanism from different angles. The trial converts to a paid plan automatically. The conversion happens without a confirmation step. The cancellation path is either hidden or does not stop the billing. Independent write-ups that traced the timeline describe it plainly: you pay $1 on day zero, then the plan auto-converts on day seven and the full price is charged unless you cancel before that. One Trustpilot reviewer went further and pointed out that a missing cancellation button breaks EU consumer law.

Credits That Disappear

The second cluster of complaints is about credit consumption. A user in Colombia bought a one-day credit pack for a task involving eight images. The system told them they needed more credits. They asked it to complete half the job with what they had. It delivered nothing.

That matches a Trustpilot account from a paying subscriber on the $19.99 plan who watched a single task on a large PDF consume 4,278 of their 10,000 monthly credits while failing repeatedly. It also matches my own test, where a ten-row spreadsheet cost 102 of 120 free credits. Skywork charges for compute whether or not the output lands, and it does not publish a per-task price, so there is no way to budget for a job in advance.

The credit rules have also changed several times. Users describe an unlimited model under Skywork 2.0 that switched to credits with the 3.0 release without warning. The App Store release notes later announced “the end of the Credit Era” and a move to membership tiers. The paywall I hit in September 2026 still displayed credit allowances for every plan. Whatever the rule is this month, it has not stayed in place for long.

Where the Praise Comes From

The picture online is not uniformly negative. The App Store listing carries reviews from people who use Skywork for research and rate it highly; one describes running astrophysics work through it and praises the pipeline that shows its sources and reasoning. The Product Hunt launch page for Skywork Super Agents is full of positive launch-day comments about research depth and multi-format output. On Reddit, even the people defending the tool concede that its output can look too structured and less polished than a design-first product like Gamma.

Independent reviewers who tested it in 2026 landed in the same place I did. One summed it up as a capable agent with messy billing and noted that the company had changed its pricing model three times within a few months. Another flagged that the company has not published a data policy for its hardware products, which matters for a platform that stores your documents and your research.