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OmniFocus 4

Heavyweight GTD task manager that still sells a perpetual licence

Price: $74.99 once

This versionThe next major is a new purchase

Buy direct Website

Price read on omnigroup.com, the page Buy direct opens.

The catch

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

The full picture

The perpetual licence is version-locked. Omni's own support page puts it plainly: same-version updates such as 4.0 to 4.1 are free, but a "new major version of the application (e.g. OmniFocus 3 to 4) will require a paid upgrade". OmniFocus for the Web is subscription-only and is not part of a perpetual licence. Custom perspectives and AppleScript automation need the $149.99 Pro tier, which is a lot of money up front for features many people only discover they want later.

Pays back in
15 months
Seats
No Mac count statedOmni licences count "computers or people, whichever number is smaller" — one person may install a single licence on all their own Macs, and the same purchase also unlocks iPhone, iPad, Watch and Vision Pro.
Developer account
Required
Buy once$74.99Rent 5 years$300

$225 kept over five years, and you still have the app.
Against Todoist Pro at $60 a year, $5 per month, $60 billed yearly. Also replaces TickTick Premium at $50 a year and Asana.

What it looks like

OmniFocus 4: OmniFocus 4 on the Mac in dark mode at 2116x1352: perspective rail (Inbox 2, Projects, Tags, Forecast 4, Flagged 3, Nearby, Review 9), project list column, and the Review perspective open on 'Fall Vacation' — 'Project 8 of 9 - Review every week - Last reviewed 9/11/25' with a Mark Reviewed button and seven actions with notes.
OmniFocus 4 on the Mac in dark mode at 2116x1352. Vendor site (omnigroup.com/omnifocus/)
OmniFocus 4: OmniFocus 4 Mac window, Projects perspective (2116x1352): full folder/project sidebar (Personal, Travel, House, Work), a selected 'New Feature Launch' project in the outline with a highlighted action showing its Computer/High tags, Defer and Planned controls and a note, plus the toolbar's Quick Entry, search and inspector buttons.
OmniFocus 4 Mac window, Projects perspective (2116x1352). Vendor site (omnigroup.com/omnifocus/)
OmniFocus 4: OmniFocus 4 Mac window in light mode (2116x1352) with a 'Focus: Work' banner across the top, the Work folder's projects in the sidebar and the Projects outline showing Single Actions, Team Support and Conference Prep with due-date badges.
OmniFocus 4 Mac window in light mode (2116x1352) with a 'Focus. Vendor site (omnigroup.com/omnifocus/)

Images belong to their developers.

What you’re buying

OmniFocus is for people whose task list has outgrown being a list. Projects nest, tags cut across them, defer dates keep things hidden until they matter, and custom perspectives let you assemble the exact view your week needs. There is a formal Review cycle built in, and whether you use it is roughly what separates people who love OmniFocus from people who bounce off it in a fortnight.

Omni leads with the $99.99-a-year subscription now, but they kept selling licences: $74.99 Standard, $149.99 Pro, one payment. Unusually, the licence is universal — Mac, iPhone, iPad, Watch and Vision Pro from a single purchase, with sync through Omni Sync Server at no charge. Compared with per-platform pricing elsewhere, that is the part worth noticing.

Read the boundary carefully. Omni say 4.0 to 4.1 style updates are free and a new major version is a paid upgrade; in practice owners have paid roughly half list to move up. OmniFocus for the Web is subscription territory and no perpetual licence includes it. Custom perspectives and AppleScript sit behind Pro, which doubles the price.

If your day is twenty things and none of them depend on each other, this is the wrong app and something simpler will serve you better. OmniFocus earns the money when you are carrying dozens of parallel commitments and need to trust nothing has quietly fallen off.

What owners report

Points that recur across the discussions below. A report of what users say, not our verdict: we don’t review software.

Praised

  • Owners credit the review cycle and enforced project structure, rather than any single feature, as the reason they have stayed with it for a decade or more
  • That one purchase covers Mac, iPhone, iPad and Watch is repeatedly named as what makes the perpetual licence the obvious choice over the yearly plan

Criticised

  • The Pro price produces visible sticker shock in release and pricing threads, and the recurring question is whether Standard is enough rather than whether the app is good
  • Long-time version 3 users collect small regressions in version 4 rather than one big complaint — keyboard shortcuts that only work on a single selection, Forecast no longer showing what it used to

Details

The price in full

"v4 Standard License" $74.99 and "v4 Pro License" $149.99, both one-time and both universal across Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Apple Vision Pro. The alternatives Omni sells are an annual subscription at $99.99 per year (all platforms plus web) and a web-only plan at $4.99 per month or $49.99 per year. Owners of earlier versions get a discounted upgrade path.

The OmniFocus 4 page at omnigroup.com
The developer’s own page. omnigroup.com, captured 22 Sep 2026
Free trial
Yes
Works offline
Yes
Apple Silicon
Native
On Setapp
No
Minimum macOS
not stated
App Store rating
4.0 from 336 people
Developer
The Omni Group

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