Amphetamine pricing: what the free tier covers

Most people searching for Amphetamine pricing are not looking for a number. They are checking whether the free download turns into a paywall later, whether a Pro tier exists that unlocks the feature they actually need, and whether the thing is still maintained. The short answer, verified on the Mac App Store listing on 10 September 2026, is that the app costs nothing, has no in-app purchases, and has no separate paid version. The longer answer is that free software still has costs, and for a menu bar utility those costs show up in two places: the work you do by hand, and the strip of screen the icon occupies every day.

What the listing actually says

The Mac App Store page shows Amphetamine at no cost, with no in-app purchases listed. The seller is William Gustafson. The listing first appeared in November 2014, and the version available on 10 September 2026 was 5.3.2, released on 10 November 2023. The download is 6.7 MB, filed under Utilities, and localised into ten languages including Japanese, German, French, Korean and Simplified Chinese.

The developer states the model directly in the store description, under a heading asking whether the app costs anything:

No catch. Amphetamine is 100% free. No advertisements. No in-app purchases. Nothing to unlock/no "pro" version. No annoying prompts asking you to review Amphetamine. No links for other paid apps. No tracking. No data-harvesting. Source: apps.apple.com, listing checked 10 September 2026

That phrasing rules out the pattern that makes pricing questions worth asking in the first place. A freemium menu bar utility has a reason to stay visible: the upgrade prompt is part of the product. An app with no tier above the one you already have does not need to remind you of anything, which is why the pricing model and the calm of your menu bar are related questions rather than separate ones.

There is also no donation link or tip jar on the store page. That is worth noting alongside the release history rather than on its own, because the two facts explain each other.

Free, but check the four things a price page never shows

Price is the easiest fact to find and the least useful one when a product costs nothing. Before relying on any free utility, check four things that change more often than a number does.

The first is whether distribution has stopped. The second is whether new signups or new downloads have been closed off, leaving the app usable only by people who already have it. The third is whether the developer or publisher has changed hands, which happens more often in this category than most people expect. The fourth is whether the pricing model itself has been revised, which for a free app means a move to paid rather than a change in amount.

On 10 September 2026, none of the four applied to Amphetamine. The listing is live, downloads are open, the seller name is unchanged since the 2014 release, and the price remains zero with no purchases attached.

What is worth carrying forward is the release date. The current build shipped in November 2023. Keep-awake utilities interact with power management, display sleep and privacy permissions, all areas macOS revises regularly. An app that has not shipped in a while is not automatically broken, and the release notes for 5.3.2 show fixes for Apple Silicon detection and a Sonoma crash related to Bluetooth privacy settings, so the developer has responded to OS changes before. The practical rule is simple: before upgrading macOS, confirm the behaviour you depend on still works, rather than assuming that a price of zero means zero maintenance risk.

What the free download leaves you to install by hand

Free does not mean self-contained. Apps distributed through the Mac App Store run sandboxed, which is a store requirement, and the sandbox blocks certain operations no matter what the app would like to do. Two pieces sit outside the download as a result.

Amphetamine Enhancer is a separate helper distributed as a disk image on GitHub rather than through the store. It also costs nothing, is MIT licensed, and the release is notarized by Apple. It requires Amphetamine 5.0 or later. It adds a fail-safe for closed-display mode and gives the main app the ability to use every running process for triggers and app-based sessions. The reason for splitting it out is stated plainly:

Amphetamine itself is a sandboxed app. All apps distributed through the Mac App Store are sandboxed (it's a requirement). Sandboxing severely limits what an app can do on your Mac. Source: github.com, repository checked 10 September 2026

Power Protect is the second piece. On Apple Silicon Mac laptops, connecting or disconnecting a power adapter or a display with power delivery can make closed-display sessions behave unexpectedly. The fix is a script plus a configuration file that you download and place into two specific locations yourself, followed by one Terminal command. The developer explains that Apple does not permit the app to install those files directly, so the steps are manual by necessity.

Add those together and the picture is clear. The money cost is zero. The setup cost is two extra downloads and a Terminal step, and only if the advanced behaviour matters to you. For someone who only wants the display to stay on during a long render, neither piece is needed.

The split also changes how updates reach you. The main app arrives through the store, so it updates with everything else. The helper and the Power Protect files sit outside that channel, which means nothing tells you when a newer version exists. If you install either one, note the date somewhere, because a helper left at an old version while the main app moves forward is a common source of behaviour that looks like a bug but is a version mismatch. This is the ordinary trade of store distribution: one channel handles the updates, and anything the sandbox forbids has to live outside it and be maintained by hand.

The requirement line is not consistent, so read the right field

One detail catches people running older hardware. The store description says the app needs macOS 10.11 El Capitan or higher. The requirements field on the same page says macOS 10.13 or later. Both are official text on the same listing, and the requirements field is the one the store enforces, so treat 10.13 as the practical floor.

The description adds that some features need a newer macOS than the minimum. That distinction matters more than it sounds. Running on the floor version means the app launches. It does not mean every trigger type and every locking behaviour is available, because several of those depend on system frameworks and permission prompts that changed across releases.

For a free app, that requirement line is the real gate. When nothing costs money, the shortlist is set by what your Mac can run, not by budget. On a current Mac the sensible approach is to install two or three candidates, live with each for a few days, and keep the one that fits, since the only thing being spent is time.

What to compare when both options cost nothing

Comparing a free app against a paid one on price produces no information. Compare the conditions instead. The table below lists the fields worth filling in for any keep-awake or menu bar utility, with the Amphetamine column reflecting the listing as checked on 10 September 2026.

What to check	Amphetamine	What to look for elsewhere
Cost	Free, no in-app purchases	One-time, subscription, or free with a paid tier
Distribution	Mac App Store only	Store, direct download, or both
Last release	Version 5.3.2, November 2023	Date of the most recent build
Sandbox	Sandboxed, helper app covers the gaps	Which permissions are requested and why
Manual steps	Power Protect installed by hand on Apple Silicon laptops	Whether the installer completes the setup
Support	Developer support portal, no paid channel	Whether a response commitment exists

Two of those rows deserve more weight than the rest. Distribution decides how updates reach the machine and whether the app can be reinstalled on a second Mac without hunting for a licence file. Manual steps decide whether the setup can be repeated later from memory, which matters on the day a machine gets replaced and every configuration has to be rebuilt in an afternoon. A free app with three manual steps and a paid app with none are not the same purchase, and the price column is the one place that difference never appears.

Filling in that table takes a few minutes and replaces the question "which is cheaper" with "which one meets the conditions on this Mac". For a menu bar organiser the same fields apply, and the pricing page is written to be read that way rather than as a single number. Where two tools overlap in function, how it compares sets out the differences that survive after price is removed from the comparison.

The cost that repeats is menu bar width

A free utility still charges rent, and it is paid in pixels. Amphetamine communicates state through its menu bar icon, so installing it consumes one slot permanently. Turn on the session timer and the slot widens, because the remaining time is drawn next to the icon in either twelve or twenty-four hour format.

On a MacBook with a notch, that width is not an abstraction. Items that do not fit in the space to the right of the notch simply stop being drawn, and the first thing most people notice is that an icon they use daily has vanished. Counting installed utilities is not enough in that situation. The width each one occupies matters just as much, and a timer that you glance at twice a week is an easy thing to switch off.

A workable rule for deciding what stays visible: keep the icons whose state you need to read at a glance, such as whether a session is currently running, and hide the ones you only click to configure something. Sorting on that basis rather than on how much you like each app produces a menu bar that shrinks noticeably. The list of what a menu bar manager for macOS can do with the hidden group is on the features page, and the questions that come up most often after hiding icons are collected in the FAQ.

What to change first

Confirm the two facts that actually affect you before anything else: that the requirements field, not the description text, matches your macOS version, and that you do not need the Enhancer or Power Protect for the way you plan to use the app. Then count how many times you clicked the icon in the past week. Zero clicks means it belongs in the hidden group rather than the visible one, and if you want to try that split on your own menu bar, Koffret is the place to start.