Almost every journaling app I tried before building Cozy charged a subscription. $5 a month here, $50 a year there. Software you keep paying rent on to read writing you already did.
Cozy is the other thing. You pay for it once. You own that version. You keep using it.
The price
- Desktop: $35 once. One license covers every Mac and Windows you own.
- iPhone: $19.99 once, or free with a desktop license. Cozy for iPhone is on the App Store as its own app. Buy it on its own, or enter your desktop key and it unlocks.
- No subscription. No tiers. No account.
- A year of updates. Every license includes one year. After that Cozy keeps working forever, and another year is an optional $17 if you want it.
- One license, every desktop. A single payment covers Mac and Windows.
Why this is possible
Subscription pricing makes sense when the company has to keep something running for you — servers, sync, an account system. Cozy doesn't have any of that. Your journal is a folder of files on your own computer. Nothing on my side has to be up at 3 a.m. for your journal to work.
Because the costs are mostly one-time (build the app, ship the app), the price can be one-time too.
What you actually own
When you buy Cozy, you get an application that opens, writes, and reads files in a folder you choose — on your computer, and on your phone. The folder is your journal. Both the app and the folder live on your own devices.
If I get hit by a bus, the app you have keeps working. If you stop paying, you don't stop paying — there's nothing to stop. The journal is yours.
For people tired of the subscription model
A journal is the last place I want a monthly bill. You keep it for years, ideally decades. Paying rent on something you intend to keep forever has always felt backwards to me. Cozy is the version where you don't.
Related reading: a private journaling app, an offline journaling app, a journal in plain files, and Cozy vs Day One.