One-time purchase vs subscription: the real cost of planning apps

Wed, 05 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Five years of Sunsama costs $1,200. Five years of Motion costs $1,140. I built a planner app that costs eight euros once.

Let that sit for a second.

I’m not going to pretend the subscription model is always a scam. Some software genuinely costs money to run. Servers, sync infrastructure, a team of engineers keeping the lights on. That’s real. But somewhere along the way, the productivity app market decided every tool needs to be rented to you forever, and the math stopped making sense.

Pricing on Time Blokker

One-time purchase vs subscription: the real cost of planning apps