Mac apps you buy once and own.

Lifetime lasts as long as the company keeps shipping blocklist updates

Updates stop eighteen months after purchase unless you pay a discounted renewal

The default licence stops before version 13 unless you pay more for the Forever tier

Each major version is a fresh $29.99 purchase, not a discounted upgrade

Configured only by hand in a TOML file, and it replaces macOS Spaces rather than using them

Free, but the download runs through a Canva account and the AI tools need a paid Canva plan

The one-time unlock covers today's features plus one year of new ones, not everything after that

Recent Apple silicon MacBooks already cap charging at 80% in macOS, which may be all you need

Only the £59 Mega Supporter tier includes free upgrades forever; £34 buys Alfred 5

$9.99 Pro covers the current major version only; the $24.99 lifetime tier is the forever one

The iPhone and iPad app is a separate purchase with its own monthly subscription

It uses native Spaces, so you keep the slow macOS switching animation, and it is still a 0.x release

Mac App Store only — no direct download or licence file, and the source is closed

No build listed for macOS 27 yet — the newest release on the page stops at macOS 26

Updates stop after one year unless you pay $25 a year; your version keeps working

The $19.99 covers the 1.x series only; a future 2.0 would be a separate purchase

Major versions are a separate purchase — the jump from 3 to 4 cost $29

$24.99 buys Bartender 7 only; version 8 is a paid upgrade and Pro features are yearly

Menial does not publish update terms, and past major versions were paid upgrades

Major versions are paid upgrades, currently $29.99 to $39.99 every couple of years

One purchase covers about a year of updates, after which newer major versions are a fresh buy

The $15 licence stops getting updates after two years; only the $25 tier is a true lifetime

Three-way merge is Pro only, so the $35 Standard edition will not serve as a git merge tool

Only the direct licence is perpetual; the Mac App Store version is a subscription that stops working

The Grid, the reason most people buy Bitwig, is only in the EUR 399 Pro edition

Updates stop after two years unless you pay $49.99 for another window; the app keeps working

Buy it on the Mac App Store — the developer's own site sells a separate web version

Deeper git and team features are subscription-only; only the open-source app is free

The licence never expires but includes only 18 months of updates

The $49.99 unlock is an in-app purchase, and separate iOS-only unlocks are sold alongside it

Current builds need macOS 14 or newer, so an older Mac is stuck on an old version

Apple's store sells a $99.99 lifetime bundle; the website's Pro+ lifetime is $300 for the same name

The $29.99 tier is the discounted pack; the two full unlocks are $49.99

CCC 8 will be a paid upgrade, discounted for existing owners

The next major version costs 40% of what you paid; your licence stops before it

Syncing to another Mac properly wants ChronoAgent, a separate $19.99 purchase

Updates stop after one year unless you renew at $19; the version you own keeps working

The cheaper Plus edition only gets 4.x updates — only the Lifetime Edition covers what comes next

Company or institution machines need the $15-per-computer site licence, minimum five

Free on the desktop only — the iOS app is a separate €29.99 purchase

The licence covers minor updates only, so a future major version may cost again

None found

The free version already covers most 8-bit UHD work — check you actually need Studio

Major versions are a paid upgrade, $9.95 to $19.95, roughly every five to seven years

Updates stop after a year unless you pay to extend; the version you have keeps working forever

Updates stop after a year unless you renew at 40% off; your copy keeps working

Which sites work depends on constant updates; a redesign can break one for a while

The free tier is deliberately basic — the actions worth having sit behind the $35 Pro licence

Major versions are a paid upgrade, and upgrade discounts apply only if you bought direct from C-Command

VIP Support is free for the first year only, then needs a paid extension

The lifetime tier is only reliably buyable as an App Store in-app purchase

Snippets are YAML files you edit by hand, and syncing them between Macs is your job

Some premium content is Creator Studio subscribers only, and Motion and Compressor cost extra

Major versions are a separate $15 purchase, though new ones come along rarely

Nothing on the site promises free major upgrades, so a paid version 3 is possible

Updates stop when your one- or two-year window ends; the version you have keeps running

You own version 14; version 15 is a new purchase, and cloud and AI features are excluded

Support is GitHub issues, and some niche iTerm2 features are still missing

The $14.99 unlock buys Gifox 2; a paid Gifox 3 is already named on the developer's site

It converts video you already have — recording the screen is another app's job

Major versions are paid again — Glyphs 2 and 3 owners paid 199 to move up to Glyphs 4

The iPhone and iPad app is a separate purchase from the Mac one

None found

There is no GUI at all, so every behaviour you want is something you write in Lua

It will not read the copy protection on a commercial DVD or Blu-ray by itself

Major versions are a separate $20 upgrade, roughly every few years

Only works as well as an app's accessibility support; some Electron apps expose almost no labels

HoudahSpot 7 will be a paid upgrade; a version 6 licence covers 6.x releases only

Each platform is a separate purchase, and major versions may cost extra

The repo has not been pushed to in a year and some README features are still unimplemented

The pricing page never states what future major versions the 75 dollar licence covers

Volunteer-run, so fixes and releases arrive when contributors have time

Free covers the Mac app only — server-side compression is the paid ImageOptim API

The free app is deliberately limited — Dolby Vision, lossless audio and cloud sources are Pro

The macOS build is a GTK port — menus, shortcuts and dialogs don't behave like a Mac app

$79 covers Studio 2 only — the quicker iShowU V6 recorder is a separate $89 app

Weather is a separate subscription once the six months included with a licence run out

One maintainer sets the pace, and very high-volume output feels slower than GPU terminals

Events can be created and deleted but not edited — editing still means a trip to Calendar.app

Anything interesting is a JSON complex modification, and it remaps keyboards only

No sync of its own, and the iOS app is a separate paid purchase from someone else

It creates 7z and zip but only extracts rar, and cannot edit an archive you already have

Major versions are a paid upgrade, currently $25, and arrive roughly every couple of years

Needs system-wide Input Monitoring permission, so it can see everything you type

The $12.99 Mac App Store build unlocks nothing extra — it is a donation with auto-updates

Version-locked to LaunchBar 6, current since 2014, and past major upgrades were paid

Complex Word and Excel files can shift on round-trip, especially macros and tracked changes

Major versions are a paid upgrade unless your licence was bought after 1 January 2024

Mac only, and Logic Pro for iPad is subscription-only rather than part of this purchase

No commercial support, and rule handling is rougher than the paid alternatives

Whether hardware brightness control works at all depends on your monitor, cable and dock

No iOS app and no sync, so the history stays on the one Mac

Some optional AI features call out to cloud APIs you pay for separately

App Store only, so there is no trial, and updates have slowed to occasional minor fixes

The $69.99 permanent unlock is introductory pricing and returns to $89.99 later

None found

Major versions are a separate paid upgrade, at about half price for existing owners

It reports that the mic or camera turned on — it cannot block anything

Support is a GitHub issue tracker, and each new macOS release needs a matching build

Major versions are a paid upgrade — Moom 3 to 4 cost owners $8 — and free updates run about a year

The $99 covers one year of updates, then it auto-renews at $49/year unless you cancel

No editor and no official support — scenes and macOS audio routing are yours to set up

Multi-device sync is $48 a year unless you wire up iCloud or git yourself

The next major version will be a paid upgrade, historically around half list price

A future OmniPlan 5 is a separate paid upgrade, historically discounted for existing owners

Each major macOS release needs its own build, and the current one is Apple silicon only

At $89.99 the lifetime plan takes about three years of the annual plan to pay off

Readdle states new features may cost extra, and the licence covers the Mac app only

Compression only: no editing, OCR or signing, and a future major version may be paid

Closed source with no stated business model, so nothing guarantees it stays free

Permute 4 needs macOS 26 on Apple silicon; older Macs buy Permute 3 instead

Picking and contrast only — no palettes, no measuring, no screenshot tools

The one-time build is drifting behind the subscription one, which gets the Warp Tool exclusively

The buy page never says how long updates last, so treat a version 3 as a likely paid upgrade

The cheap $12 tier stops getting updates after two years; $26 buys the one that never does

The licence covers Postico 2.x only, and Postico 3 will be a paid upgrade as 2 was

Updates cover the current major version; the app is already at 8, so a paid 9 is possible

One year of updates; after that you keep every Pro feature, but not new releases

No upgrade policy is stated, so treat the $9 as buying the version shipping today

No one-time option exists, and the free tier keeps clipboard history for only three months

The $60 tier stops at $20,000 yearly gross revenue; past that the licence is $225

Saved layouts, display-triggered layouts and window throwing are held back for the paid Rectangle Pro

No published upgrade policy, so a future Rectangle Pro 2 could be a second purchase

The nodes worth having are Pro-only, which is $49.99 rather than the $29.99 standard edition

One Mac per licence, and updates stop after a year unless you pay half price again

A future Scapple 2 would be a separate purchase, as with Scrivener

Major versions are paid upgrades, and Telestream does not publish the upgrade price

No free trial — you pay first and rely on the 30-day refund if it turns out not to be for you

Scrivener 4 will be a new purchase, at a discount for owners of 3

Editing and Sharing unlock separately; both together is $79.99, not $59.99

Screenshots only — there is no video, GIF or screen recording at any price

Updates stop after a year, and the licence buys the Mac app alone with no trial first

Reads and annotates only — no page editing, OCR or form filling

Each major version is a separate purchase — the upgrade to SoundSource 6 costs $25

Filtering only happens while your Mac is awake, so your iPhone sees unfiltered mail first

Fan control is in legacy mode and, in the README's words, receives no updates or fixes

Lifetime costs five years of the yearly plan before it starts paying off

Updates stop after three years; your version keeps working but newer builds need a paid upgrade

Updates stop after three years; your version keeps working but newer builds need a paid upgrade

A much older licence pays again for each new major version, discounted at best

Useless without a trackpad; on a mouse-only Mac almost none of the gestures are reachable

No official Mac app — you configure it in a browser, and the menu bar wrappers are third-party

Updates stop after one year unless you renew; the app itself keeps working

No iPhone or iPad app — on mobile you edit the file in someone else's text editor

Major upgrades cost extra, and the 7-day refund covers the direct purchase, not the App Store one

The $10 is a 50%-off promotion on a $20 list price, and no upgrade policy is stated

Each platform is a separate purchase — the iPhone app is another $9.99

Nothing to pay, but it is a cross-platform app that never quite feels Mac-native

The iPhone app is a separate $7.99 purchase, and the Mac licence covers two Macs

A year of upgrades is included, then a new version costs $98 or $83 a year to stay current

Only surfaces preferences Apple already ships; the system-level tools are in paid TinkerTool System

The iPhone and iPad app is a separate purchase from the Mac unlock

A future Transmit 6 would be a separate purchase, as the jump from 4 to 5 was

Basic buys Typinator 10 only; the next major version is a separate paid upgrade

A major version jump like 1.x to 2.x can require paying again

The AI Assistant is a separate US$69/year subscription, not part of the lifetime licence

One person builds it, so "lifetime" means the app's lifetime rather than yours

Buying Ebooks then upgrading to Press costs $19.99 more in total than buying Press up front

Needs macFUSE, a system extension that can lag weeks behind a new macOS release

Blocking outside Safari needs the separate, recurring Filtr subscription

Your licence is valid forever but includes only about a year of updates, and Witch 5 will cost extra

One year of updates included; another year costs 60% of what you first paid

Major versions are a paid upgrade, historically 50% off if you already own one

One licence covers two Macs at a time, so a third means deactivating one

Export beyond HTML needs Pandoc, and PDF needs a LaTeX install on top

The app is free forever, but only 300 MB of sync storage is; a PDF library outgrows that fast