a free Permute alternative
updated · by Anton Shakirov
Permute is a well-made converter at $14.99 once, handling over a hundred formats with drag-and-drop simplicity. before you weigh it against anything, look at how much of the job macOS already does on its own. that changes what you are shopping for.
if you convert media daily or meet unusual formats by name, Permute is built for that and fourteen dollars is a fair price. this page is for the person converting a handful of files a month, who will find that macOS covers most of it free and that what it misses is a short, specific list.
what Permute is built for, and what it costs
breadth and polish. over a hundred formats across video, audio, images, pdf and text — AVI, WMV, MP4, HEVC, ProRes, WebM and AV1 on the video side, MP3, AAC and FLAC on the audio side, HEIC, AVIF and WebP for pictures — with drag-and-drop queues and Apple silicon acceleration.
$14.99 as a one-time purchase, both on its own site and in the Mac App Store, and included in a Setapp subscription. there is a free trial. we checked both listings on 10 september 2026; the price has not moved since we first recorded it.
which version you would actually be running
Permute 4 requires macOS 26 and Apple silicon. on an Intel Mac, or on macOS 11 through 15, the version you get is Permute 3 — still sold, still $14.99, currently 3.14.8.
one detail before you buy on an older Mac: moving from 3 to 4 later is free only if you bought Permute 3 during 2026. buy it earlier and the upgrade is paid, at 40% off. a fork in the decision, not a mark against the app.
the class of tool, rather than this one product, is covered separately: the Mac file converter page
what your Mac converts before you pay for anything
every result on the first page of this search answers it with a list of apps. none mentions that a clean install already converts images and video, in three places, free. that is the starting line.
right-click in Finder, no app involved
select any number of images in Finder, right-click, and Quick Actions offers «convert image» — a format and a size, applied to the whole selection at once. it is batch, and for heic off a phone into jpeg it is the correct answer, full stop.
video has its own entry: «encode selected video files», which ships as a service in the system and works the same way, on a selection, from the right-click menu.
Apple documents the Finder quick action and its formats: perform quick actions in the Finder
the image format macOS will not write
Finder's converter offers jpeg, png and heif. sips, the command-line tool behind it, goes further, and «sips --formats» on macOS 26.6.2 prints the boundary: «public.avif avif Writable», but «org.webmproject.webp webp» with no Writable beside it.
so the system reads webp and refuses to make one. ask it anyway and it says so: «Error: Can't write format: org.webmproject.webp», exit code 13, no file written. avif from the same source image goes through without a word. of the picture formats people actually ask for, webp is the wall.
Preview is the third built-in route for images, and Apple lists what it writes: convert image file types in Preview
mov to mp4 in two seconds, if you know the command
«avconvert -p PresetPassthrough» rewraps a QuickTime file as mp4 with the picture copied across untouched: no re-encoding, nothing lost. an 82 MB clip took 2.03 seconds here and came out 82 MB.
what it will not do is open mkv or webm. neither will QuickTime. that is not a setting you have missed; the system has no reader for those containers, which is why every «my mkv will not play» thread ends with someone naming a third-party app.
sips does pdf, and that is the trap
sips handles pdf, which reads like good news until you feed it a document. a three-page pdf run through «sips -s format pdf» came back one page. exit code 0, no warning, no error. pages two and three simply gone.
it is behaving as an image tool, which is what it is. but nothing in the output tells you that, and a file that looks converted is worse than one that failed.
the heic case in full, including where the right-click stops being enough: convert heic to jpg
so what is actually left to pay for
for a photo here and a clip there, nothing. use the right-click and keep your money. the built-in route starts costing you at four points: webp on the way out, mkv and webm on the way in, knowing the size before you commit rather than after, and remembering which of the three paths handles the file in front of you.
| what you are doing | your Mac on its own | with hop |
|---|---|---|
| one heic off your phone, needs to be a jpeg | right-click, convert image, done | not needed — use the right-click |
| forty photos for a site that wants webp | will not write webp at all | webp out, the whole batch in one pass |
| a mov an upload form keeps refusing | avconvert -p PresetPassthrough, once you know it exists | drop it in; no command to look up |
| an mkv or webm that will not open | QuickTime opens neither | repacked to mp4, picture copied across |
| a clip that has to land under a size limit | convert, measure, adjust, convert again | the resulting size is shown before you commit |
| Pages or Keynote files to hand over as pdf | open each one and export it | the batch goes through in a single pass |
the mov case on its own, command and all: convert mov to mp4
how hop covers what your Mac will not
images come out as jpeg, png, heic, avif or webp, that last one being the format the system refuses. pdfs are compressed rather than flattened. mkv and webm are repacked into mp4 with the picture copied across, by a small helper that downloads once, so the file finally plays without a re-encode.
documents are covered too: markdown to pdf laid out by hop itself, Word files to pdf or markdown, a pdf's text pulled back out as markdown, a scanned page read with Apple's Vision. Pages, Numbers and Keynote go out in batches as pdf, docx, xlsx or pptx, exported by the apps themselves.
the size you were promised is the size you get
most converters ask you to pick a quality level and find out afterwards what it cost. hop runs a sample through first and shows the resulting size before you commit — so trimming an attachment down to something an email will accept stops being guesswork.
compression has a level of its own, and the promised number moves as you push it. originals are never touched: the result lands next to them as a copy. everything happens on this Mac, with no connection needed at any point.
| Permute | hop | |
|---|---|---|
| price | $14.99 one-time, or Setapp | free, open source, MIT |
| formats | 100+ | the everyday set |
| requires | Permute 4: macOS 26, Apple silicon | macOS 14+, Apple silicon and Intel |
| size shown before converting | not advertised | yes, from a real sample |
| documents | pdf and text among its formats | markdown, Word, Pages, Numbers, Keynote |
| works offline | yes | yes |
| other tools included | none; it is a single-purpose app | seventeen |
the container problem written up on its own page: open an mkv file on Mac
video for the place it is going
vertical for reels and shorts, square for a feed, wide for YouTube: one button sets the frame, the resolution and the compression together from what the platform itself recommends, with the bitrate shown beside the dial. no looking up recommended dimensions again.
a picture of the wrong shape is cropped to fill, given bars, or laid over a blurred copy of itself, whichever you choose. it is never stretched. this is the part the built-in encoder does not attempt at all: «encode selected video files» offers resolutions, not aspect ratios.
the same job as a step-by-step: compress video for reels and shorts
where Permute is the better buy
this is the part a comparison page usually skips, so plainly: Permute is a specialist and hop's converter is not. Permute is one app doing one job, with over a hundred formats, codec-level settings and a proper conversion queue behind it. hop's converter is one module of eighteen behind a menu bar icon, covering the formats most people meet and stopping there.
if you need ProRes or AV1 by name, if you are working through WMV and AVI out of an archive, if you want to set a codec rather than a preset, or if converting is a daily job rather than a monthly one, that is Permute's territory and fourteen dollars is not much to pay for it. we have not measured what it may or may not be missing, and this page asserts nothing about that: the table above covers our side, and theirs is best read from their own pages.
the other name that comes up in this search has a page of its own: hop compared with HandBrake
frequently asked questions
- is there a free Permute alternative for Mac?
- hop is one, free and open source. but check the built-in route first: Finder's right-click «convert image» handles a batch of pictures and «encode selected video files» handles video, with no app installed at all.
- can macOS convert files without any app?
- a lot of them, yes: images and video from the Finder right-click, and more formats through sips and avconvert in Terminal. what it will not do is write webp, or open mkv and webm.
- can it convert to webp?
- yes. that matters because macOS itself will not: sips reads webp but refuses to write it, so this is one of the few gaps a converter genuinely fills.
- does anything get uploaded?
- no. conversion happens on your Mac and works with no connection at all.
- does it run on Intel Macs?
- yes, there is an Intel build, and hop needs macOS 14 or newer. Permute 4 requires Apple silicon and macOS 26; Permute 3 covers the older systems.
- can i see the size before converting?
- yes. hop tests a sample first, so the number it shows is real rather than an estimate.
- can it convert documents?
- yes — markdown, Word files and pdfs into one another, and Pages, Numbers and Keynote out as pdf, docx, xlsx or pptx.
- how many formats compared with Permute?
- far fewer, and deliberately: the everyday set against Permute's hundred-plus. if you need a format by name, that is the reason to buy theirs.
the hop side of this
file converter — images, video, audio and documents. offline, with the size shown up front.
about the author
Anton Shakirovmakes hop
makes hop and every page on this site. eighteen tools under a single menu bar icon, MIT licensed and open source. reads and answers issues and email himself.