A Mac clipboard manager without a subscription: your options in 2026
A clipboard manager runs all day and sees everything you copy. Paying for it every year, forever, is a lot to ask. These are the options that do not.
The three ways to pay for a clipboard manager
- Free and open source: Maccy. No catch, minimal by design.
- One-time purchase: Duplia ($9.99), and Alfred's Powerpack, which includes clipboard history among many other features.
- Subscription: Paste ($29.99 per year), and clipboard features inside some larger subscription suites.
What you get for the subscription
The honest answer is mainly sync. Paste keeps your clipboard in step across Mac, iPhone and iPad through iCloud, and can search text inside screenshots. If you use those, it can be worth it. If you do not, you are paying yearly for a feature you never open. Over three years, $29.99 per year comes to roughly nine times the price of Duplia.
Free: Maccy
Open source, installs from Homebrew, keyboard-driven. It handles text well and asks for nothing. If you never wanted a product, just a function, start here.
Pay once: Duplia
$9.99, one licence for up to 3 Macs, all 1.x updates included, 7-day free trial, no account to create. It adds what a plain list lacks: automatic categories, source app and time on every clip, pins, live search and a file shelf. Your history lives in a local database on your Mac, and the network is used only for the licence check and updates.
What you give up by not subscribing
No iCloud sync to other devices, and no OCR search inside images in Maccy or Duplia. Both apps keep your data on the Mac, which for many people is the point.
Quick pick
- Cost nothing: Maccy
- Pay once, get a polished, categorised history and file shelf: Duplia
- Need iPhone sync: Paste, knowing it is a subscription
Frequently asked
What is the cheapest Mac clipboard manager?
Maccy is free and open source. If you want a paid app with more features, Duplia costs $9.99 once for up to 3 Macs.
Is Paste a subscription?
Yes. Paste costs $29.99 per year, and is also available through Setapp. It is the best-known option with iPhone and iPad sync.
Does a one-time purchase include updates?
With Duplia, all 1.x updates are included. If a major version 2 ever comes with big new features, upgrading is optional.
Related
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