Canary Mail vs Thunderbird
Both are bought outright, both sit in email & tasks, and both are bought by people leaving Mimestream, Spark Premium, Superhuman. Here is what actually differs — including what each price does not buy.
The short answer
- Thunderbird is free; Canary Mail costs $100.
- Thunderbird has the cleaner licence: free and open source, against lifetime plan available for Canary Mail.
- Canary Mail needs an account with the developer; Thunderbird does not.
Side by side
 Canary Mail$100Lifetime tier |  ThunderbirdFreeOpen source | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | ai mail client that still sells a one-time lifetime bundle | free mail, calendar and contacts with no tier above it |
| Price | $100 | Free |
| Licence | Lifetime plan available | Free and open source |
| What you get | Normally sold as a subscription, but a genuine one-time lifetime option exists. | No licence to buy, and the source is public. |
| The catch | Apple's store sells a $99.99 lifetime bundle; the website's Pro+ lifetime is $300 for the same name | Nothing to pay, but it is a cross-platform app that never quite feels Mac-native |
| Macs per licence | 5 | not established |
| Account required | yes | no |
| Works offline | partly | partly |
| Apple Silicon | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | No |
| On Setapp | No | No |
| Minimum macOS | macOS 12 | not established |
| App Store rating | not established | not established |
| Last updated | not established | not established |
| Price checked | 2026-09-22 | 2026-09-22 |
Apple’s public API reports a rating for only a small minority of Mac apps, and returns zero for most of the rest even when the store page plainly shows reviews. A blank here means we could not read a number, never that an app is unrated or disliked.
In their own right
Canary Mail
A cross-platform mail client with end-to-end encryption and an AI assistant, sold as either a yearly subscription or a one-time lifetime purchase covering all four platforms.
Thunderbird
The open-source desktop mail client, with a calendar, an address book and OpenPGP encryption built in. Free forever on the desktop, funded by donations rather than seats.