The Whole Menu Now Costs $1.99 a Month
Both plans dropped on October 12: Solo Cup is $3.99 a month, or $1.99 billed yearly, for all 128 apps on macOS and Windows. What the new price does to the comparisons, and where a bundle is still the wrong answer.
For most of this year the menu cost $9.99 a month. On October 12 that changed. Solo Cup is now $3.99, or $1.99 a month on the yearly plan, and either price covers all 128 apps on macOS and Windows.
Nothing else moved. Same apps, same eight shelves, same rules about where your files live, and the same promise that they stay there. Only the number at the counter changed.
What changed
| Plan | Devices | Before | Now |
|---|---|---|---|
| Solo Cup | 1 | $9.99 a month, or $59.88 a year | $3.99 a month, or $23.88 a year |
| Family Roast | up to 5 | $15.99 a month, or $95.88 a year | $7.99 a month, or $47.88 a year |
Solo Cup sits 60% below where it was. Family Roast is half. Both plans unlock the entire menu, and the only difference between them is how many computers you sign in on: one for Solo Cup, five for Family Roast.
Annual billing is still 50% off, which is where the $1.99 comes from. $23.88 charged once a year works out at $1.99 a month; Family Roast at $47.88 a year works out at $3.99. If you'd rather stay month to month, the prices are $3.99 and $7.99.
There's no end date attached to any of it. These are the prices on the membership page, and nothing in the checkout counts down to a deadline.
What $23.88 a year buys
Divide the yearly figure by the size of the menu and it gets small: about 19 cents per app for the year, or 1.6 cents per app each month if you pay yearly. That only means something if the apps are worth installing, and nobody installs all 128. It's a way of saying the decision stopped being expensive.
The homepage puts the same idea next to a drink. One matcha is about $5, and the whole menu is $1.99 a month on the yearly plan.
The comparison it changes
Setapp is the obvious yardstick. Its Mac plan runs $14.99 a month, or $8.99 on yearly billing. The post from September explained why we stopped describing ourselves as the cheaper version of it, and the honest part of that argument still holds. Setapp carries hundreds of apps, including iOS and web tools, and in some slots their apps are better than ours.
What the new price changes is the size of the gap. Monthly, $3.99 against $14.99 is a little under four times. On yearly billing, $1.99 against $8.99 is a little over four times. A reader can do that arithmetic in ten seconds, which is the reason it's worth putting in plain numbers.
The smaller comparison matters more. A single app subscription of the kind this menu replaces usually runs $5 to $15 on its own. The tally from August added up fifteen paid services that eight menu bar apps cover and came to about $774 a year. One year of the entire menu is $23.88. The maths of stacking subscriptions gets its own post if you want the long version.
Where a bundle is still the wrong answer
If you need one app and nothing else, buy that one app from the developer. A plan you open twice a year is worse value than a licence you own, whatever the monthly figure says. When buying outright beats subscribing depends on how long you expect to keep using the thing, and for plenty of people the answer is that they should buy.
The other honest case is that the apps you'd actually keep are the free ones. Five of them need no account and no plan: ChessCafe, FileShipper, TinyImage, Pixpresso and TorrentMilk are free to keep.
What the price does not change
- Your work stays in ordinary files in folders you choose. Documents come back as .docx from DocCafe, notes as Markdown from NoteCafe, passwords as a .kdbx file from PassBrew, and pages you edit or sign stay as PDFs from PDFCafe.
- The apps run with the Wi-Fi off, which is the test we keep coming back to.
- 96 of the 128 apps have a Windows build, so one plan covers the Mac and the PC on the same desk.
- The trial lasts 7 days. It saves a card when it starts and charges nothing until it ends.
- You cancel from your account page whenever you like.
The maths, for the people who check it
Here's the yearly plan taken apart. Solo Cup is $23.88 a year, which is $1.99 per month. Family Roast is $47.88 a year, or $3.99 per month, and with five machines in use that works out at about 80 cents per device.
At the shelf level, the Latte office apps are the ones most people would otherwise pay for separately: a word processor, a spreadsheet, slides, a PDF editor, notes, tasks and a calendar. The Frappe shelf holds the data tools, and Espresso holds the small utilities that sit in the menu bar.
Both plans cover all 128 apps on macOS and Windows, and the free shelf doesn't need either of them. Start the 7-day trial at getapps.cafe/membership.