Infuse
home video library player with a real lifetime pro unlock
Lifetime tier
This is a subscription product with a lifetime tier attached, not a classic perpetual licence, and the free version is cut down on purpose. "Lifetime" means the lifetime of the product, not a contract with you. It is sold as an in-app unlock rather than a licence key you download, so it most likely travels with the account you buy it with. Infuse plays files, it does not organise or transcode them, so a messy library stays messy unless you tidy it or run a Plex or Jellyfin server behind it.
Cost over five years
$100 once = 22 months of Emby Premiere. Over five years that is $270 rented against $99.99 owned — $170 kept, and you still have the app.
Emby Premiere priced at $54 a year — Emby's yearly plan; Emby also sells a $119 lifetime. Checked 2026-09-22.
Infuse is for the drive full of video you already own. Point it at a share or a NAS and it comes back with posters, descriptions, episode ordering and a watched marker, instead of a list of filenames with a release group in them. It decodes a wide spread of formats directly, passes lossless audio through where the hardware allows, and keeps your position in sync between the Mac, the iPhone and the Apple TV, which is the feature people actually stay for.
The pricing is honest about what it is. The app is free and genuinely usable free; Pro is $1.99 a month, $16.99 a year, or $99.99 once. The one-time option is real, not a promotion, and it is the reason this app is listed here at all — but it sits inside a subscription product, so treat "lifetime" as meaning the life of Infuse rather than a promise made to you. Against Emby's yearly plan, the break-even lands somewhere near the two-year mark.
It is not worth $99.99 if the free version already plays your files, which for a lot of people it does. And it is not a server: nothing here transcodes for a weak client or shares your library with a friend. If that is the job, you want Plex or Jellyfin, with Infuse in front of it or not at all.
What it looks like
What it does
- Streams from SMB, NFS, DLNA, Plex, Jellyfin and cloud storage
- Fetches metadata, artwork and cast details for your own files
- Dolby Vision, HDR10 and lossless audio passthrough on Pro
- Shared watch state across Mac, iPhone, iPad and Apple TV
- Direct play of formats Apple's own player refuses
Cancel instead
Also bought outright in media
The facts
- Price
- $99.99
- Licence
- Lifetime plan available
- What you get
- Normally sold as a subscription, but a genuine one-time lifetime option exists.
- Details
- The base app is free. Infuse Pro is sold at $1.99 a month, $16.99 a year, or $99.99 once for lifetime. Against the yearly plan the lifetime unlock pays for itself in about six years; against monthly, in roughly four.
- Free trial
- Yes
- On Setapp
- No
- Minimum macOS
- not stated
- Developer
- Firecore
- Price checked
- 2026-09-22 (medium confidence)
Check it yourself - Price band
- $60 to $120