Paste
visual clipboard history with a real lifetime plan
Lifetime tier
$89.99 is roughly three years of the $29.99 annual plan, so it only wins if you stay with Paste that long. Switching from an existing subscription is not instant: you cancel, wait out the current billing period, and then buy Lifetime. Where you buy changes what you get — a website purchase is a licence key, an App Store purchase is tied to that Apple Account, so pick deliberately. Cross-device history depends on the developer's sync service, which means your clipboard leaves the Mac. Family and Team pricing are subscription only, and the student discount does not apply to the Lifetime plan.
Cost over five years
$90 once = 10 months of Setapp. Over five years that is $540 rented against $89.99 owned — $450 kept, and you still have the app.
Setapp priced at $108 a year — Mac plan billed yearly, before tax; includes Paste for Mac but not the iOS apps. Checked 2026-09-22.
Paste is the clipboard manager for people who recognise things by shape rather than by reading a list. Hit the shortcut and your history comes up as a wide shelf of cards you scroll through; pinboards hold the snippets you use every day, and search finds the address you copied last Tuesday. It syncs to iPhone and iPad, and for most buyers that is the feature doing the work — copy on the laptop, paste on the phone.
The licence is the awkward part. Paste is sold as a subscription first, $29.99 a year or $3.99 a month, and the $89.99 Lifetime plan sits beside it as a genuine one-time purchase with future updates included. Break-even is about three years, so buying it is a bet on the app and its developer still being here in 2029. Buy direct and you get a licence key; buy on the App Store and it belongs to that Apple Account. Already subscribed? You cannot swap straight over — cancel, wait for the period to end, then buy.
Don't pay $89.99 if a plain local history is all you actually want: Raycast's free clipboard history or Maccy will do that and never send anything anywhere. Paste's cross-device history goes through the developer's sync service, which is a trade worth making on purpose rather than by default.
What it looks like
What it does
- Full clipboard history as a searchable visual shelf
- Pinboards for snippets you paste constantly
- Syncs history across Mac, iPhone and iPad
- Lifetime plan states that all future updates are included
- Seven-day trial of the full feature set
Cancel instead
Also bought outright in automation
The facts
- Price
- $89.99
- Licence
- Lifetime plan available
- What you get
- Normally sold as a subscription, but a genuine one-time lifetime option exists.
- Details
- The Lifetime plan is $89.99 paid once, described on the pricing page as "pay once and use Paste forever, including all future updates". The subscription alternatives are $3.99 a month billed monthly, or $29.99 a year billed annually (shown on the card as $2.49 a month). Prices are in USD excluding taxes and vary by region. Buying from the website gets you a licence key; the Family plan for up to six people is annual and App Store only, and the Team plan is website only. The 30% student discount applies to the first year of an annual plan, not to Lifetime. Paste for Mac is also included in Setapp.
- Free trial
- Yes
- On Setapp
- Yes
- Minimum macOS
- not stated
- Developer
- Paste Team
- Price checked
- 2026-09-22
Check it yourself - Price band
- $60 to $120