a free alternative to Setapp — for the utilities part
updated · by Anton Shakirov
Setapp rents you a catalogue: more than 250 Mac apps for $14.99 a month on one machine. that is a good deal for someone who works across a dozen of them. it is a poor one for someone who subscribed to get four small menu bar utilities and never opened the rest.
if you regularly open four or five Setapp apps and one of them is a big one — a mail client, a writing app, a time tracker you live in — keep the subscription, the maths is on its side. this page is for the person who checked their usage and found a timer, a clipboard, a window snapper and a converter.
what Setapp is built for
breadth, and it is not a small thing. one payment, hundreds of full apps with no ads and no upgrade fees, including large paid products you would otherwise buy one by one. for someone working across many of them it costs less than the licences — that is the design, and it holds.
what the plans actually cost
three plans, checked at the source on 10 september 2026: $14.99 a month for one Mac, $18.99 with iOS devices, $22.99 for four Macs and four iOS devices. seven-day trial, up to 40% off yearly. AI credits have since moved into the plans too — a thousand a month on the base plan, two thousand on the top — with two further AI tiers at $22.99 and $35.99.
for fairness in the other direction: hop is one app, eighteen tools, free and open source — all eighteen tools
it is also how a lot of small Mac developers get paid, which matters before you cancel: not a middleman skimming a catalogue, but the revenue model several of these apps run on.
where the Setapp maths turns
the apps you open and the apps you pay for
subscription fatigue does not come from paying for software. it comes from paying for a catalogue and using a corner of it. the honest test takes a minute: look at what you opened last month, not what you meant to try.
if the answer is «a text recogniser, something for archives, a system monitor and a window snapper», a catalogue of 250 apps is being paid for so that four small utilities keep working. at $14.99 a month that is a hundred and eighty dollars a year, and some two hundred and forty-six apps you never open.
and if the answer includes one specialist app you live in daily, the arithmetic flips. an app of that size costs more on its own than the whole subscription does in a year. that is not a point against Setapp — it is the case for it, and this page is not arguing with it.
the text recogniser there is the one people name most often — the TextSniper comparison
four of these may already be in macOS
a third answer is worth ruling out first: some of these utilities have stopped being utilities. window snapping arrived in macOS Sequoia, clipboard history in Spotlight in macOS 26 — two of the four reasons most often named for keeping a utilities subscription, both now in the system.
neither is complete: the built-in tiling has no custom layouts, the built-in clipboard does not keep files. but if those were what you were paying for, check the system first — that costs nothing.
Apple's own description of what tiling does and how to reach it: tile app windows — Apple Support
and the clipboard section in Spotlight, macOS 26 and later: search your clipboard history in Spotlight
where the built-in tiling stops — window layouts in hop
and what the Spotlight clipboard does not keep — clipboard history in hop
the dedicated clipboard app in that catalogue is Paste — the Paste comparison
where Setapp is better than hop
four things the subscription does that we do not.
breadth we are not competing with
everything in the catalogue that is not a small utility: mail clients, writing apps, developer tools, media editors, backup, disk tools. hop replaces none of it. eighteen menu bar tools against a couple of hundred full applications is a different product category altogether.
specialists beat a bundle at their own job
each app in that catalogue was built by people who do one thing. in its own niche a specialist beats the same function inside anything that bundles eighteen of them, ours included. if you use one utility daily and know it well, the bundled version will feel thinner — and you will be right.
the six we compare with elsewhere are all in Setapp
checked in the catalogue on 10 september 2026: TextSniper, iStat Menus, Paste, Bartender, Permute and Timing are all inside the subscription, and every one has a comparison page here. if you already subscribe, all six are effectively paid for — switching only makes sense once you have decided to drop the subscription anyway.
the system monitor of the six — the iStat Menus comparison
the menu bar organiser, which solves crowding from the opposite direction — the Bartender comparison
and the converter, where the gap is narrowest — the Permute comparison
support and one bill
there is a company behind it with people answering email, and one line on your card instead of nine purchases to track. we are an open source project: support is a repository and whoever is reading it. for some people that is fine, for some it is not.
how hop covers the Setapp utilities
eighteen tools behind one menu bar icon, about six megabytes, no account, no paid tier. the question is not whether that beats a catalogue — it does not. it is whether it covers the corner you were actually using.
| what you do | with Setapp | with hop |
|---|---|---|
| you live in one specialist app — an editor, a mail client, a writing app | cheaper than that app's own licence — this is what it is for | not covered, keep the subscription |
| you use four small utilities and nothing else | $14.99 a month, or about $180 a year | all four are in the eighteen, free |
| you want them to survive cancelling | rented — they stop working when it ends | installed and MIT licensed, nothing to expire |
| you are counting disk space | the client plus every app it installs | about 6 mb in total |
| you want a specialist for one job, free for the rest | the whole catalogue either way | eighteen free, buy the one specialist separately |
the last row is where most people land, and neither side advertises it: eighteen small tools for nothing plus one paid app chosen deliberately beats either whole answer on a lot of Macs.
buying Setapp apps one at a time
a third option gets lost between the two. since early 2026 Setapp sells apps individually through its marketplace, without the catalogue subscription. if two apps are the entire reason you pay, that may cost less than either option here.
better to say that than pretend the choice is only between a subscription and us.
the change was covered when it launched, march 2026: Setapp now lets users buy or subscribe to apps individually — 9to5Mac
how to test a Setapp alternative in five minutes
- open Setapp and look at what you used last month — it tracks this, so it is a fact rather than a guess
- split it in two: full applications, and small utilities
- if even one full application is in weekly use, stop here and keep the subscription
- if the list is all utilities, check whether tiling and Spotlight already cover part of it
- for the rest, install hop — about 6 mb, no account — and run it alongside for a fortnight
- cancel only after that, remembering the catalogue apps stop opening when the billing period ends
what you stop being able to open
the fortnight is not caution for its own sake. the apps are rented: when the subscription ends they stop opening, and anything kept only inside one of them needs moving out first. afterwards there are the files they leave behind.
removing an app and its leftovers is one of the eighteen — the uninstaller in hop
and where those leftovers actually live — uninstall an app with its leftovers
frequently asked questions
- does hop replace Setapp?
- no. it covers small menu bar utilities; Setapp is a catalogue of more than 250 full applications. it replaces the utilities corner and nothing else — if you use the catalogue for anything bigger, keep the subscription.
- how much is Setapp?
- checked at the source on 10 september 2026: $14.99 a month for one Mac, $18.99 with iOS devices, $22.99 for four Macs and four iOS devices, with up to 40% off yearly and a seven-day trial. two AI tiers sit above those at $22.99 and $35.99.
- is Setapp worth it if I only use a few apps?
- it depends which few. four small utilities is a hundred and eighty dollars a year for four small utilities. one specialist app you use daily is usually cheaper through the subscription than bought outright — that app alone can justify the plan.
- are the apps you compare with elsewhere in Setapp?
- six are: TextSniper, iStat Menus, Paste, Bartender, Permute and Timing, all confirmed in the catalogue on 10 september 2026. if you already subscribe, those are effectively paid for and switching gains you nothing on them.
- what happens to Setapp apps if I cancel?
- they stop working when the paid period ends — access is rented, not owned. that is the practical reason to run a replacement alongside the subscription for a couple of weeks rather than cancelling first and testing after.
- is there a way to buy just one Setapp app?
- yes. since early 2026 the marketplace sells apps individually, without a subscription. worth checking if one or two apps are the whole reason you pay.
- is hop free forever?
- free and open source under MIT, no paid tier and none planned. nothing to cancel, nothing to renew, nothing that stops opening later.
the hop side of this
app uninstaller — remove an app together with what it left in about thirty places.
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.