Benchpad blog
Why Benchpad costs money
Benchpad is $10 a year — about $1.67 a month — and there's a free tier with no card. Here's why a small, flat price is better for you than free.
Why Benchpad costs money
Benchpad Pro is $10 a year. That's about $1.67 a month, or five and a half cents a day. There's also a free tier — one pad, the full editor, offline, sync — with no credit card.
We could have made the whole thing free. Here's why we didn't.
Free tools disappear
Google killed Google Reader, Sunrise, and Inbox. Wunderlist got absorbed into Microsoft To Do and shut down. Springpad gave five million users 30 days to export. Hundreds of free note apps have launched and died in the last decade.
Free tools disappear because they have no business model. They get acqui-hired, pivot to enterprise, or run out of money — and the people who built their lives around them get an export notice and a shrug.
We want Benchpad to exist in 10 years. A subscription — even a small one — means we have revenue. Revenue means we can keep the servers running, fix bugs, and never need to sell your data to make ends meet.
A little money changes how you use a tool
When something is free, it's easy to sign up and never come back. You feel no commitment and no loss if you stop.
When you pay — even a little — something shifts. You've chosen this tool. You're more likely to build a habit and get value from it.
$10/year isn't really about the money. It's about the commitment. Yours and ours.
Why a free tier, then?
Because the product should be worth using before you pay. The free tier is one full pad with the complete editor and offline-first sync — not a crippled trial with a countdown.
Pro ($10/year) unlocks the rest: all three pads, all eight themes, image and file attachments, voice notes, and Markdown/PDF export. One flat price. No per-seat tax, no monthly trap, no ladder of tiers designed to push you up.
Why not more?
We could charge $5/month, or $99/year. Other tools do.
But Benchpad is three scratchpads and a sync engine. It's deliberately simple. Charging a lot for something simple feels dishonest. $10/year is the price where you don't think about it, we can run the servers, nobody feels ripped off, and the relationship stays honest.
The business model, in full
We sell one subscription for $10/year. That's the entire business model.
We don't sell your data. We don't show ads. We don't have investors pushing us to "monetize the user base." One product, one price, one promise: we keep it running, you keep it simple.
What you get
- An app that works offline, always — your device is the source of truth
- Sync across your devices, with conflict-free CRDT merging
- Native iOS and Android apps, plus a web app that installs anywhere
- Plain markdown — export to Markdown or PDF anytime, leave anytime
- A team that says no to feature bloat
What you don't get
Folders. Tags. AI that reads your notes. A Notion-style database. A "second brain" system. Decision fatigue.
Twenty dollars. One year. A tool that's still here in ten.
Benchpad Interface
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On every platform
Native apps for iPhone & Android, and a Mac menu bar & Windows tray app — same three pads, offline-first, synced everywhere.
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