AlDente pricing: what the free tier covers
The battery icon in the menu bar is no longer just the battery icon. There is a second one next to it, put there by a charge limiter, and the question on the table is whether that second icon should be a paid one. AlDente has a free tier and a paid tier, three separate ways to pay for the paid tier, and a set of license conditions that matter more than the headline price.
This is a breakdown of what the vendor publishes, checked on 10 September 2026. Prices change and feature splits move, so the point here is to show which lines to look at rather than to fix a number in place.
The free tier covers exactly two features
The vendor's pricing page lists thirteen features in a single column and marks each one as present or absent per plan. In the free column, two are marked present: Charge Limiter and Discharge. The other eleven are marked absent.
The eleven behind the paywall:
| Feature | What it does |
|---|---|
| Automatic Discharge | Discharges without a manual trigger when the battery sits above the limit |
| Discharge in Clamshell Mode | Same, with the lid closed and an external display attached |
| Heat Protection | Stops charging when battery temperature passes a threshold |
| Sailing Mode | Sets a lower bound so the battery is not topped up constantly |
| Control MagSafe LED | Colours the charging LED to reflect the app's state |
| Top Up | Charges to 100 percent once, then reverts to the previous limit |
| Calibration Mode | Runs a full cycle to correct a drifted percentage reading |
| Apple Shortcuts Support | Exposes actions to the Shortcuts app |
| Customizable Menubar Icons | Changes what the app shows in the menu bar |
| Customizable Popup Window | Changes the layout of the popover |
| E-Mail Support | Direct support from the vendor |
For anyone reading this because the menu bar is crowded, the ninth row is the one to notice. Choosing what this app puts in the menu bar is itself a paid feature. On the free tier the menu bar presence is whatever the default is, and the only relevant control left is the Appearance setting that hides the icon completely.
Three ways to pay, and they are not equivalent
The paid tier has three entry points on the vendor's pricing page. As listed on 10 September 2026:
| Entry point | Listed price | Shape |
|---|---|---|
| Subscription licence | 11.49 EUR | Billed annually, auto renews, cancellable |
| Lifetime licence | 23.99 EUR | One payment |
| Setapp | 9.99 EUR per month | Bundle including 240 or more other apps |
The arithmetic between the first two is worth doing once. Two years of the annual licence is 22.98 EUR, which is still below the lifetime price. Three years is 34.47 EUR, which is above it. The crossover lands at the start of year three. So the real question is not which price is lower but how long this Mac stays in service, and whether a battery tool is something to keep running that whole time.
Setapp is a different kind of decision. It is a subscription to a catalogue, not to this app, and the vendor's page states the catalogue holds more than 240 apps. Paying 9.99 EUR a month for this one utility costs roughly ten times the annual licence over a year. Paying it because four or five other tools already in daily use are in the same catalogue is a different calculation entirely, and the only way to settle it is to list what is already installed and check the overlap.
The billing runs through a payment processor
Purchases are handled by Paddle as merchant of record, and the vendor's FAQ routes several common tasks there rather than to the app. Resending an invoice, resending a licence code, changing the payment method, and cancelling a subscription all follow the same shape: open the buyer portal, enter the address used at purchase, verify by email, find the transaction, and make the request from there.
One consequence deserves emphasis. Deleting the app does not cancel the subscription. An annual licence keeps renewing after the app is gone from the Applications folder, because the billing relationship lives with the processor, not with the copy on the Mac. Anyone stopping should cancel first and remove second.
The FAQ also covers the case where a licence code never arrives after purchase. The listed causes are a delay of up to thirty minutes, delivery into a spam folder, a typo in the address entered at checkout, and payment network failures. Working through those before contacting support saves a round trip. A student discount exists as well, offered through an external student pricing service rather than directly on the pricing page.
License limits matter more than the price
A single purchase produces one licence key. The vendor states it can be active on up to three different macOS user accounts at the same time, and that those accounts can live on one Mac or across as many as three Macs.
That framing catches people out. The unit counted is the user account, not the machine. Anyone running separate work and personal accounts on one laptop consumes two of the three slots on a single computer. A household with three Macs and one account each fits exactly, with nothing left for a spare.
Moving to a new Mac has a defined order. Open the dashboard, click the gear in the lower left, open Manage License, save the licence code somewhere retrievable, then click Deactivate. Only after that does activation on the new machine work cleanly. Forgetting to deactivate before selling or wiping the old machine turns a two minute task into a support request with the payment processor.
There is also a connectivity condition that rarely appears in price comparisons. The paid tier validates its licence at least every thirty days. A Mac kept offline for longer than that reverts to the free tier, and reactivation after reconnecting is manual. For a laptop that travels and syncs constantly this never surfaces. For an air gapped machine or a long field deployment, it is a real constraint and should be checked before purchase rather than after.
Check compatibility before checking the price
A price comparison is wasted effort if the Mac in question is outside the supported range, and the range has moved recently. The vendor's FAQ states that macOS 11 Big Sur is supported up to version 1.37.3, and that from 1.38 onward support starts at macOS 12 Monterey. The upper bound listed on the pricing page runs to macOS 26 Tahoe, with macOS 27 work landing in the 1.39 series. Anyone deliberately staying on an older system needs to know whether an older installer is still obtainable, because that becomes the only path back if something breaks.
Hardware coverage is listed model by model rather than by chip family. MacBook Pro entries begin with the late 2013 Retina models and MacBook Air entries with the mid 2013 machines, running through to the 2026 releases. Desktop Macs appear on the list too, including iMac, Mac mini, Mac Studio, and Mac Pro, though a machine without a battery has little use for a charge limiter and the practical audience is laptops.
One more split falls along the paid line and is easy to miss when comparing prices. Third party apps cannot run while a Mac sleeps or is powered off, so on the free tier a machine left plugged in with the lid closed charges to 100 percent regardless of the limit that was set. The two features that prevent this, holding the limit through sleep and through shutdown, are both paid. For anyone whose laptop spends every night on a charger with the lid shut, that single behaviour is usually the deciding factor rather than any of the headline features.
What Apple shipping a charge limiter changes
In 2026 the ground under this category moved. The vendor's own blog notes that the first beta of macOS 26.4 expanded Optimized Battery Charging to include a built in manual charge limiter. The FAQ then gives practical guidance for running both: set the macOS charge limit to 100 percent and turn Optimized Battery Charging off, so the two systems do not fight each other. It also notes that the macOS limit does not persist when the Mac is powered off.
Read against the feature split above, this matters specifically for the free tier. Setting one limit and leaving it there is close to what macOS now does on its own. The features that have no operating system equivalent are the conditional ones: stopping on temperature, changing limits on a schedule, discharging with the lid closed, and holding a limit while the Mac sleeps or is shut down. Those all sit on the paid side.
Context on the vendor itself, since longevity is part of any lifetime licence decision. The blog states the first version was published on GitHub in February 2020, the paid tier launched in April 2021, and a third person joined the team in 2024. It is a small team based in Austria. No change of ownership has been announced as of 10 September 2026, and the project is actively shipping: version 1.39.1 was published on 9 September 2026, rebuilding charge control for macOS 27 and adding a toggle that must be enabled before limits below 80 percent can be used.
The menu bar slot is a separate decision
Whichever tier gets chosen, the app occupies one slot in the menu bar. On a Mac where that row already holds a dozen items, and especially on a laptop where the notch cuts the usable width, one more permanent resident is not free.
The app's own Appearance settings offer two switches here: Hide Menubar Icon and Show Dock Icon. Hiding the menu bar icon does clear the slot, but it also removes the place where the current level is displayed and the limit is adjusted. Turning off the Dock icon frees Dock space and leaves the menu bar untouched. Neither setting produces the outcome most people actually want, which is an icon that is out of sight but still one click away.
That outcome comes from a different layer. A menu bar manager for macOS collapses the row and expands it on demand, so the charge limiter keeps its icon and its controls without keeping its visual weight. A tool of that kind is worth choosing on how it behaves while collapsed, which the Features page describes, and on how it compares with the alternatives, which the How it compares page lays out.
What to change first
Before paying anything, open the pricing page and confirm the two features in the free column still match what is actually needed, then decide how many years this Mac has left, because that single number settles annual against lifetime. Separately from that, deal with the crowding: collapse the menu bar row so the battery icon stops competing for attention, and see Koffret for how one tool in that category is priced.
Frequently asked questions
Can I just use AlDente for free?
Yes, if a fixed charge limit is all you need. The free tier includes Charge Limiter and Discharge, which covers setting a ceiling and manually bleeding the battery down to it. Temperature based stopping, scheduling, clamshell discharge, and holding the limit through sleep and shutdown are all paid features.
Is the lifetime licence worth it over the annual one?
It depends on how long the machine stays in use. At the listed prices, two years of the annual licence costs less than the lifetime licence and three years costs more, so the break even falls at the start of year three. Anyone replacing their Mac on a two year cycle gets no benefit from paying once.
How many Macs does one licence cover?
One purchase gives one licence key, active on up to three macOS user accounts simultaneously. Those accounts can be spread across up to three Macs, or sit on a single machine. Separate work and personal accounts on one laptop use two of the three slots.
If I delete the app, does the subscription stop?
No. Billing is handled by the payment processor, so removing the app from the Applications folder has no effect on renewals. Cancel through the buyer portal using the email address from the original purchase, confirm the cancellation, and then uninstall.