Open source
No licence to buy, and the source is public. How we tell the licences apart
Category
- Design, graphics & illustration15
- Developer & terminal tools15
- Documents, PDF & office13
- Email, calendar & tasks15
- Files, disk & backup14
- Launchers, clipboard & automation12
- Menu bar & system utilities12
- Privacy, security & networking13
- Screenshots, recording & annotation15
- Video, audio & media14
- Window management & desktop control14
- Writing, notes & markdown14
Licence: Open source
- PerpetualUpdates included, forever35
- This versionThe next major is a new purchase47
- Paid upgradesMajor versions cost again25
- Lifetime tierA one-time plan of a subscription app14
- FreewareNothing to buy9
- Open sourceNothing to buy; source published36
Each mark reads left to right: this major version, the next, the one after. Filled is included, half is a paid upgrade, hollow is bought again.
Price
11 apps priced in £ or € sit outside these bands, because we don’t convert currencies.
| Free | Configured only by hand in a TOML file, and it replaces macOS Spaces rather than using them | |
| Free | It uses native Spaces, so you keep the slow macOS switching animation, and it is still a 0.x release | |
| Free | Deeper git and team features are subscription-only; only the open-source app is free | |
| Free | Current builds need macOS 14 or newer, so an older Mac is stuck on an old version | |
| Free | Free on the desktop only — the iOS app is a separate €29.99 purchase | |
| Free | Snippets are YAML files you edit by hand, and syncing them between Macs is your job | |
| Free | Support is GitHub issues, and some niche iTerm2 features are still missing | |
| Free | It converts video you already have — recording the screen is another app's job | |
| Free | None found | |
| Free | There is no GUI at all, so every behaviour you want is something you write in Lua | |
| Free | It will not read the copy protection on a commercial DVD or Blu-ray by itself | |
| Free | The repo has not been pushed to in a year and some README features are still unimplemented | |
| Free | Volunteer-run, so fixes and releases arrive when contributors have time | |
| Free | Free covers the Mac app only — server-side compression is the paid ImageOptim API | |
| Free | The macOS build is a GTK port — menus, shortcuts and dialogs don't behave like a Mac app | |
| Free | One maintainer sets the pace, and very high-volume output feels slower than GPU terminals | |
| Free | Events can be created and deleted but not edited — editing still means a trip to Calendar.app | |
| Free | Anything interesting is a JSON complex modification, and it remaps keyboards only | |
| Free | No sync of its own, and the iOS app is a separate paid purchase from someone else | |
| Free | Needs system-wide Input Monitoring permission, so it can see everything you type | |
| Free | The $12.99 Mac App Store build unlocks nothing extra — it is a donation with auto-updates | |
| Free | Complex Word and Excel files can shift on round-trip, especially macros and tracked changes | |
| Free | No commercial support, and rule handling is rougher than the paid alternatives | |
| Free | No iOS app and no sync, so the history stays on the one Mac | |
| Free | None found | |
| Free | Support is a GitHub issue tracker, and each new macOS release needs a matching build | |
| Free | No editor and no official support — scenes and macOS audio routing are yours to set up | |
| Free | Picking and contrast only — no palettes, no measuring, no screenshot tools | |
| Free | Saved layouts, display-triggered layouts and window throwing are held back for the paid Rectangle Pro | |
| Free | Reads and annotates only — no page editing, OCR or form filling | |
| Free | Fan control is in legacy mode and, in the README's words, receives no updates or fixes | |
| Free | No official Mac app — you configure it in a browser, and the menu bar wrappers are third-party | |
| Free | Nothing to pay, but it is a cross-platform app that never quite feels Mac-native | |
| Free | Needs macFUSE, a system extension that can lag weeks behind a new macOS release | |
| Free | Export beyond HTML needs Pandoc, and PDF needs a LaTeX install on top | |
| Free | The app is free forever, but only 300 MB of sync storage is; a PDF library outgrows that fast |