How we check
A directory of prices is worthless if the prices are wrong. This page says exactly what we do, so you can decide how much to trust it.
Every price is read, not remembered
No price on this site is written from memory or copied from another roundup. Each one is read off the developer’s own pricing, store or order page, and every entry records the URL it came from — that is the “check it yourself” link on each app page. Where a developer renders the price in JavaScript we could not read, or sells only through a regional store, the entry is marked at medium or low confidence and says so. That is currently true of 18 of the 165 apps listed.
Every entry also carries the date it was last checked. The whole directory was last swept on 2026-09-22. Anything older than six months is flagged in amber in the “checked” column, because a stale price presented as current is the same as a wrong one.
“Lifetime” is not one thing
Most of the confusion in this corner of the market comes from one word doing four jobs. We split it:
- Buy once, own forever — One payment. Updates included, indefinitely.
- Own this version forever — One payment buys this major version outright. The next major version is a separate purchase, if you want it.
- Own it, pay for major upgrades — One payment, and the developer charges for major versions on a stated cadence.
- Lifetime plan available — Normally sold as a subscription, but a genuine one-time lifetime option exists.
- Free — No licence to buy.
- Free and open source — No licence to buy, and the source is public.
An app that sells you version 5 forever, then charges again for version 6, is a perfectly honest business. It is just not the same product as one that includes updates indefinitely, and a directory that files them under the same heading is not telling you anything useful.
The catch column
Every app has a catch field, and the build fails if it is missing. It holds one clause describing what the price does not buy: major upgrades sold separately, an update window that closes, sync that needs the developer’s account, an iOS app sold apart from the Mac one, a per-device limit.
It cannot be filtered away, sorted out of view, or left blank by accident. Where the cell reads none found, that is a deliberate answer: we looked for the usual traps and did not find one. It is not the absence of a check.
The cost-over-time maths
Where an app page shows a comparison against a subscription, that rival’s price was also read from its own pricing page, at the standard individual annual rate, on the date shown. If we could not read a real number, the comparison is omitted rather than estimated. That is why many apps have no chart: an invented figure would undermine every real one on the site.
Where the images come from
App icons come from one of two places: the Mac App Store, looked up by the app’s exact numeric id, or the developer’s own website. Nothing is matched by name search alone — searching for one app returns another with a similar name, and a wrong icon is as misleading as a wrong price. Images that are not square are rejected as marketing banners, and a maintainer’s personal avatar is never used as an app’s icon. Where we could not source one confidently, you get a plain lettered placeholder rather than a borrowed picture.
Screenshots are either published by the developer through the Mac App Store, or are our own capture of the developer’s page, taken on the date shown beneath it. Each one is credited with its source. These images belong to their developers, not to us; if you are a developer and would rather we did not show yours, say so and it comes down.
What we do not do
- No affiliate links. Nothing on this site pays us if you buy. Outbound links carry
nofollow. - No sponsored placement. Ordering is alphabetical or by the column you sort on.
- No scores or stars. We record facts about licences, not opinions about quality.
- No subscription-only apps. If the only way to pay is monthly, it does not belong here.
Where we are likely to be wrong
Prices change without announcement, regional pricing differs from the US figures we quote, sales and bundles come and go, and a developer can move to a subscription at any time. Treat this site as a well-researched starting point and the developer’s page as the authority. Always confirm on their site before paying.
If you find something wrong, the fastest fix is to say so — see submitting a correction. Lifetime Mac is a static site built from plain text files, so a correction is a small change and ships quickly.