CleanShot X pricing: what the free tier covers

CleanShot X costs $35 as a one-time purchase, called CleanShot Basic, which includes the full Mac app, one year of updates and 1 GB of cloud storage. After the first year, updates are an optional renewal at $19 per year. The alternative is CleanShot Pro, a subscription at $10 per user per month billed annually or $12 per user per month billed monthly, which adds unlimited cloud storage, custom branding and team controls. There is no free tier and no trial on the developer's site. What it offers instead is a 30-day money-back guarantee. The only way to try it without paying first is through Setapp, which has a 7-day free trial and then costs from $14.99 per month. All figures in this article were read from the CleanShot pricing page and the Setapp pricing page on October 18, 2026, in US dollars.

The two plans on the pricing page

The pricing page frames the choice as two setups, and states that both include the full Mac app. That sentence matters, because it means the subscription is not unlocking capture features. Every screenshot, recording, annotation and scrolling capture tool is in the $35 Basic licence. The difference between the plans is updates, cloud storage and team management.

	CleanShot Basic	CleanShot Pro
Price	$35 one-time	$10 per user per month billed annually, or $12 billed monthly
Mac app features	All included	All included
Updates	1 year, then optional renewal at $19 per year	Always up to date
Cloud storage	1 GB	Unlimited
Upload quality	4K	4K
Custom domain and branding	No	Yes
Team management, SSO, SCIM	No	Yes
Password protection and file access control	No	Yes

The page also lists video transcription and comments under the cloud features. Prices are shown in US dollars, and the page notes that taxes may apply at checkout. CleanShot requires macOS 13.0 or newer.

What "pay once, use forever" means here

The Basic licence does not expire. If you skip the $19 renewal, the version you have keeps working. What stops is new versions. That is the normal model for one-time Mac software, and it has a practical consequence: when a future macOS release changes something the app depends on, the fix arrives in an update you would need to renew for. Anyone who upgrades macOS every autumn should budget for the renewal. Anyone who stays on one macOS version for years can often skip it.

What three years actually costs

The headline prices are not directly comparable, because one is paid once and the others recur. Here is the arithmetic for a single user over three years, using only the prices on the official pages.

Route	Year 1	Year 2	Year 3	Three-year total
Basic, never renewed	$35	$0	$0	$35
Basic, renewed every year	$35	$19	$19	$73
Pro, billed annually	$120	$120	$120	$360
Pro, billed monthly	$144	$144	$144	$432
Setapp Mac plan, billed monthly	$179.88	$179.88	$179.88	$539.64

Taxes are excluded. Setapp advertises savings of up to 40% on yearly billing, but the page lists the monthly figures, so only those are used here.

For one person who does not need unlimited cloud storage, Basic is the cheapest route by a wide margin. Even renewing every year, three years of Basic costs about a fifth of three years of Pro billed annually. Pro makes sense when the cloud is part of the work: sharing many recordings by link, needing them to stay up indefinitely, putting a company domain on the links, or managing access for a team. Setapp makes sense only if you would use several other apps in the bundle, which is the subject of a later section.

Matching the plan to the way you work

A few common situations make the choice clearer.

A freelancer who captures screenshots for documentation and sends files directly to clients needs the app, not the cloud. Basic covers that completely, and 1 GB of storage is enough for occasional share links.

A support or product team that sends recorded walkthroughs by link every day can outgrow 1 GB of storage within weeks, since screen recordings take far more space than screenshots. That is the case Pro is designed for, with unlimited storage, comments on captures and access control on the files.

A company that requires single sign-on for every tool has no real choice. SSO and SCIM are listed only under Pro.

Someone who already pays for Setapp for other reasons should simply use CleanShot through it, since the Pro feature set is included at no additional cost.

Discounts and how licences work

The pricing page lists two discounts. Existing PixelSnap 2 customers get 20% off. Students get 30% off with a university-issued email address. Both are requested through the Get a discount links on the pricing page.

The FAQ on the same page answers the licensing questions that usually come up after purchase.

Moving to a new Mac

You activate the app on the new Mac with your licence key, and the old Mac is deactivated automatically. There is no separate deactivation step. If you have a licence for multiple Macs, the active devices are managed in the License Manager.

Adding Macs

More seats are added through the License Manager. The page does not state how many Macs a single licence covers, so check the seat count at checkout if you work on both a desktop and a laptop.

Receipts and invoices

Payment is processed by Paddle. After purchase you receive an email from Paddle with the receipt and your licence key, and the email has a View Invoice button for generating an invoice yourself. If the email cannot be found, the FAQ directs you to the License Manager.

Cloud account

Every licence comes with a free CleanShot Cloud account, and the FAQ states that using the cloud is not required for the app or any of its features. Basic buyers who never upload anything are not missing part of what they paid for.

The trial question

The pricing page answers this directly: there is no trial version. The developer offers a 30-day money-back guarantee instead, and says a full refund is given if the app does not meet expectations. In practice that is a trial with payment up front. Thirty days is long enough to use it in real work, which is more useful than a shorter free trial.

The page also points to Setapp, which has a 7-day free trial. The Setapp listing for CleanShot X states that Setapp members get the CleanShot X plus Cloud Pro version, which is the Pro feature set. If the specific question is whether Pro's unlimited cloud and sharing controls are worth $120 a year, a week on Setapp is a way to find out without buying either plan.

Setapp as a route to CleanShot

Setapp is a subscription that bundles many Mac apps. Its pricing page, checked on October 18, 2026, lists three plans:

Setapp plan	Monthly price	Covers
Mac	$14.99	1 Mac
Mac + iOS	$18.99	1 Mac and 4 iOS devices
Power User	$22.99	4 Macs and 4 iOS devices

All three have a 7-day free trial and can be cancelled at any time. Setapp also sells single apps without a membership through its marketplace.

The comparison that matters is not Setapp against Basic. It is Setapp against the sum of the apps you would buy anyway. If CleanShot is the only app from the catalogue you would use, Setapp costs more than five times as much as Basic over three years. If you would also pay separately for two or three other utilities in the bundle, the totals can come out close, and you also get Pro's cloud features. Make the list of other apps first, with their own prices, before deciding.

One more consideration: when a Setapp subscription ends, access to its apps ends with it. A Basic licence keeps working regardless.

Cheaper options and the built-in tool

If $35 is more than the job requires, two options cover a lot of the same ground.

The macOS Screenshot app

macOS includes a capable tool already. Apple's guide to taking a screenshot on Mac lists Shift, Command and 3 for the whole screen, Shift, Command and 4 for a selected area, and Shift, Command and 5 to open the Screenshot app. The Options menu sets where files are saved, whether the floating thumbnail appears and whether the pointer is included. Clicking the thumbnail opens basic markup. What it does not have is scrolling capture, a built-in video editor, text recognition from a capture, or hosted share links. If you never need those, the built-in tool may be enough.

Shottr

Shottr is a screenshot and annotation app with a different pricing model. Its purchase page, checked on October 18, 2026, says the app can be downloaded and used for free, and starts asking you to consider upgrading after 30 days. The Basic Tier costs $12 and is required for commercial use. The Friends Club tier costs $30 and adds access to experimental features and better support. Both are one-time payments, and one licence covers one user and up to five computers. Shottr focuses on screenshots, so compare it with CleanShot only on the capture and markup side.

	Price	Model	Trial
CleanShot Basic	$35	One-time, 1 year of updates	30-day money-back guarantee
CleanShot Pro	$10 to $12 per user per month	Subscription	7 days via Setapp
Shottr Basic Tier	$12	One-time	Free use, with reminders after 30 days
macOS Screenshot app	Included	Built in	Not applicable

Keeping the menu bar tidy once it is installed

Whichever screenshot tool you settle on, it will usually add an icon to the menu bar, because that is where quick capture modes, recent captures and settings live. On a Mac that already runs a cloud client, a VPN and a password manager, that is one more icon competing for space beside the notch. Shottr's own changelog notes that hiding its menu bar icon is a licensed feature, which shows how often users ask for it.

On macOS Tahoe 26 and later, System Settings has a Menu Bar page with an Allow in the Menu Bar list where any app's icon can be switched off. That removes it completely. If you want the capture icon out of sight but still reachable with one click or a shortcut, a menu bar manager for macOS can hold it behind a divider instead. The features page describes how hidden icons can still be opened by name or by keyboard shortcut without revealing the whole row.

What to change first

If you are a single user and the cloud is not central to your work, buy Basic for $35 and decide each year whether the $19 renewal is worth it. If you need team sharing, use the 7-day Setapp trial to test the Pro feature set first. Once the app is installed, if the menu bar is getting crowded, Koffret is a one-time purchase that keeps icons like it hidden but reachable.