Alfred pricing: what the free tier covers

The free version handles launching apps and searching the web perfectly well, and then clipboard history turns out to be behind a paywall. The store page lists two options in pounds sterling, both apparently one time purchases, differing by twenty five pounds for reasons that are not obvious at a glance.

This is a breakdown of where the free line sits, what the paid tier actually opens, and which of the two licence types matches which situation. All figures come from the vendor's own store and licence documentation, checked on 10 September 2026.

The shape: one time purchase, tied to a major version

The paid feature set is called the Powerpack. It is not a monthly or annual subscription. The store lists a Single License at 34 pounds and a Mega Supporter licence at 59 pounds, both described as single user.

The detail that matters more than either number is what the cheaper one is attached to. The Single License is labelled as a v5 licence, meaning the current major version. When a new major version ships, it does not carry over automatically. The vendor sells discounted upgrades to existing licence holders, so the path exists, but it is a paid path. The Mega Supporter tier removes that question entirely by including lifetime free updates.

How often that question comes up can be estimated from the release history. Alfred 4 shipped on 29 May 2019. Alfred 5 shipped on 13 July 2022, roughly three years and two months later. Version 5 has now been current since July 2022, which is over four years, with 5.7.3 released on 1 April 2026 as the most recent update. The twenty five pound gap between the tiers is effectively pre-paying for the next major version, on a cadence that has historically run somewhere around three to four years. Whether that is worth it depends entirely on how long the tool is expected to stay in the workflow.

What the free version covers

Quite a lot, and it is worth being specific because the free tier is often described vaguely.

Free covers finding and launching applications and files, web searches using both the built in search sites and custom ones, a calculator whose result drops straight into the clipboard, spelling and dictionary lookups, system commands such as sleep and emptying the Trash, Quick Look previews triggered by tapping Shift, and Large Type for throwing a phone number across the screen at readable size.

In other words, the entire launcher function is free. Someone who only wants a keyboard driven way to open things never has to pay.

That is a meaningful position rather than a crippled demo. The free tier is a complete replacement for the system search for most day to day use, and it stays that way indefinitely with no nag screens gating the core behaviour. The line the vendor has drawn is between finding things, which is free, and doing things automatically, which is not. Knowing where that line runs prevents a common mistake, which is paying for a launcher and then discovering that the specific feature that prompted the purchase was free all along, or the reverse, spending weeks working around something that a licence would have solved.

One point relevant to menu bar clutter specifically: the setting that removes the app's own icon from the menu bar is in Appearance, behind an Options button in the bottom left, and it is not a paid feature. Reducing the icon count by one requires no purchase.

What the Powerpack opens

The paid side is the automation and text handling half of the app.

• Workflows, which chain hotkeys, keywords and actions together to automate repeated tasks
• Clipboard History, covering text, images and file paths, searchable and re-pastable
• Snippets with auto expansion, so a short abbreviation becomes a block of text
• Text View and Grid View, the interactive views that render Markdown, images and PDFs
• File actions such as moving, copying and emailing results, plus custom actions
• Terminal and shell command execution, the contacts viewer, Music.app control, and 1Password bookmark search
• Custom theme creation, export and import. Choosing a built in theme is free; making one is not
• Preferences syncing across multiple Macs

Clipboard History carries a caveat that surprises people who have just paid. It ships disabled, and has to be switched on in preferences under Features. The vendor states privacy as the reason. Retention is chosen from 24 hours, 7 days, 1 month or 3 months, and the feature requires Accessibility permission in macOS before it will record anything. Buying the licence is not sufficient on its own.

Working out whether the paid half is needed

The free tier is generous enough that the purchase decision is genuinely open, which makes it worth testing rather than guessing. Three questions get most people to an answer.

Is the same text being retyped? Snippets and auto expansion only pay off if there is a repeated block: an address, a signature, a set of standard replies, a support macro. A week of noticing when the same characters get typed twice is a better estimate than intuition. If nothing surfaces, that half of the Powerpack has no value regardless of price.

Is something being lost between copy and paste? Clipboard History matters most to people who copy several things in a row and then discover the first one is gone. If the current workflow is copy, switch, paste, immediately, the history has nothing to add. Note that even after purchase this feature needs enabling and needs Accessibility permission, so it is not a passive benefit.

Is there a repeated multi step task? Workflows are the largest part of the paid tier and the hardest to evaluate in the abstract. The useful version of the question is concrete: name one sequence of three or more steps performed at least weekly. If no example comes to mind within a minute, the feature will likely sit unused, which is a common outcome and not a criticism of the feature.

Answering yes to none of the three points at staying on the free tier indefinitely, which is a legitimate outcome. Answering yes to two or three shifts the decision to which tier rather than whether to buy.

Single License against Mega Supporter

The vendor's licence documentation states the difference plainly:

The Single User License is valid for one user on two of your own Macs, for the current version. The Mega Supporter License is valid for one user on your own Macs, and gives you a lifetime of free updates to Alfred for Mac. Source: alfredapp.com

	Single License	Mega Supporter
Price	34 pounds	59 pounds
Users	One	One
Machines	Two of your own Macs	Your own Macs
Version coverage	Current major version	Lifetime of free updates
Next major version	Discounted upgrade purchase	Included

Two variables decide this: machine count and expected years of use. One Mac, and some chance of switching launchers within a few years, points at the cheaper tier. Three or more machines in regular rotation, or an expectation of using the same tool for a decade, points at the other.

Both tiers are personal use only. Using a licence at home and at work is explicitly permitted, on the condition that the Macs are for one person's use and not shared workstations. For team environments needing multiple activations, the vendor points at separate corporate licensing.

Buying in pounds from outside the UK

The store prices in pounds sterling, which introduces two costs that the price page does not show.

The first is the exchange rate on the day of purchase. The same 34 pounds converts to a different local amount depending on when the card is charged.

The second is the card issuer's foreign transaction handling. International purchases are typically converted at the card network's rate with an issuer fee applied on top, and the percentage varies by issuer and card product. The only way to know the real total is to check the specific card's terms, since the vendor has no visibility into it.

Neither cost is large in absolute terms on a purchase this size, but both are worth knowing before comparing the figure against locally priced alternatives. A tool listed at a round number in local currency and this one listed in pounds are not directly comparable on the sticker price alone, and the gap runs in whichever direction the rate happens to be sitting that month. For a single purchase that is noise. For someone assembling a set of half a dozen utilities, it adds up enough to be worth checking once rather than assuming.

There is also a source trap worth naming. Searching the Mac App Store turns up version 1.2, which is no longer updated. The vendor moved away from the App Store after a June 2012 change in Apple's requirements and now distributes current versions exclusively from its own site. Anyone expecting to buy the current version through the App Store will end up with something a decade out of date instead.

After the purchase

Activation is straightforward and does not involve a different download. The free app and the paid app are the same binary. Open preferences, go to the Powerpack tab, click the activation button, and enter the licence details that arrived by email.

Losing the licence code later is a solved problem. The code is displayed in the Powerpack tab of preferences, and the vendor suggests searching email for the subject line containing the product name. A separate licence recovery page exists for cases where neither works, which is the usual situation several years and one machine later.

Upgrading from an older version runs through a dedicated page: entering the purchase email address and licence code returns the applicable options. One exception is documented, and it is worth checking before paying again. Some licence types, press licences among them, are not eligible for upgrade pricing, and those cases go through support instead. Existing Mega Supporter holders request a current version licence by entering their previous licence details, at no additional cost.

The four things to check before paying for any tool

Price is the least volatile fact about a paid utility. Four others matter more, and here is where each stood on 10 September 2026.

Still shipping. The most recent release is 5.7.3, dated 1 April 2026. Support for macOS 26 arrived in 5.7 in September 2025. Development is active.

Still selling. Both tiers are purchasable and the upgrade path for older licences is open.

Ownership. The site and the trademark are both attributed to Running with Crayons Ltd. No transfer announcement is visible.

Price changes. The listed figures are 34 and 59 pounds today. Nothing published indicates what happens next, which is the argument for reopening the store page immediately before buying rather than relying on a figure read in an article.

What to change first

Separate the two decisions. Deciding whether clipboard history and snippets are worth 34 pounds is one question. Deciding what to do about a menu bar holding a dozen resident icons is another, and it costs nothing to answer first. Compare the approaches on How it compares, or try the collapsing approach with Koffret before spending anything.