Love the product, hate the subscription? Find an alternative you can actually own.
Subscriptions can be incredibly useful. But not everything needs permanent access to your bank account.
The Buy-It-Once List is a growing collection of alternatives to products and services that normally charge monthly or yearly. Search for something you already use, or browse by category. We’ll show you options you can buy once, use for free, or keep with a perpetual license, along with what you gain, what you give up, and how long it could take for the switch to pay for itself.
Owning isn’t always better. The goal is simply to know when you have the choice.
What are you paying for?
Currency
Compare over
Alternative type
What do these labels mean?
Free
No required purchase or recurring fee for the functionality described.
One-time purchase
You pay once for the product or version described.
Perpetual license
Your right to continue using the licensed version does not expire, although future major upgrades may cost extra.
We only call a license “lifetime” when the developer describes it that way.
5 comparisons
Productivity
Instead of
Microsoft 365 Personal
$115/year · Personal, paid yearly
One-time purchase
Office Home 2024
$199 once · Windows, Mac
Potential difference over 5 years
$376
Break-even
about 21 months
1 year
−$84
3 years
$146
5 years
$376
10 years
$951
What you gain
Pay once for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote on your computer.
No yearly renewal to remember.
What you give up
No 1 TB of cloud storage, ongoing new features or other Microsoft 365 services.
Installs on one computer; the next version costs extra.
Price last checked: September 2026
Productivity
Instead of
Microsoft 365 Personal
$115/year · Personal, paid yearly
Free
LibreOffice
Free · Windows, Mac, Linux
Potential difference over 5 years
$575
Break-even
Nothing to pay back
1 year
$115
3 years
$345
5 years
$575
10 years
$1,150
What you gain
Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, Base and Math at no cost.
No account, and it opens most Office files.
What you give up
No Microsoft cloud storage bundle or Copilot.
Not the exact Microsoft Office ecosystem; complex documents may look different.
Price last checked: September 2026
Creative · Video editing
Instead of
Adobe Creative Cloud
$71.99/month · Creative Cloud Standard, annual plan billed monthly
Free
DaVinci Resolve
Free · Windows, Mac, Linux
Potential difference over 5 years
$4,319.40
Break-even
Nothing to pay back
1 year
$863.88
3 years
$2,591.64
5 years
$4,319.40
10 years
$8,638.80
What you gain
Professional editing, color, effects and audio post-production for free.
No subscription and no account.
What you give up
Video only: it doesn’t replace Photoshop, Illustrator or the other Creative Cloud apps.
Some advanced features are reserved for the paid Studio version.
Price last checked: September 2026
Creative · Video editing
Instead of
Adobe Creative Cloud
US$54.99/month · Creative Cloud Standard, annual plan billed monthly
Perpetual license
DaVinci Resolve Studio
US$295 once · Windows, Mac, Linux
Potential difference over 5 years
US$3,004.40
Break-even
about 6 months
1 year
US$364.88
3 years
US$1,684.64
5 years
US$3,004.40
10 years
US$6,303.80
Shown in USD: no official price in the other currency yet.
What you gain
The full Studio feature set for a single price.
Your license doesn’t expire.
What you give up
Video only: it doesn’t replace the other Creative Cloud apps.
No cloud libraries or Adobe integrations.
Price last checked: September 2026
Money
Made by us
Instead of
YNAB
US$109/year · Paid yearly
Perpetual license
Heir
US$99 membership + one US$1 month · Web, Windows, Mac, Linux
Potential difference over 5 years
US$445
Break-even
about 12 months
1 year
US$9
3 years
US$227
5 years
US$445
10 years
US$990
Shown in USD: no official price in the other currency yet.
What you gain
Own a working copy of your budget, goals and records, yours to keep.
No ads and no bank connection required.
What you give up
No bank syncing: you enter or import transactions yourself.
Built on different principles than YNAB; not a feature-for-feature match.
Price last checked: September 2026
Calculations assume current prices remain unchanged and exclude taxes, promotions, optional upgrades and add-ons unless stated otherwise.
See what your subscription is really costing you
Enter any subscription and a buy-once alternative.
Billing
Time
Enter a subscription price to see the comparison.
Calculations assume current prices remain unchanged and exclude taxes, promotions, optional upgrades and add-ons unless stated otherwise.
Sometimes the subscription is still worth it
A one-time purchase isn’t automatically the better financial decision. A subscription may include continuous updates, cloud services, support or features that would cost considerably more to replicate elsewhere. And if you use something every day, the recurring price may be completely justified.
The purpose of this list isn’t to eliminate subscriptions. It’s to make sure recurring payments remain a choice rather than the default.
A note about Heir and Kontowo
Heir and Kontowo are our own products. We’ve included them in this directory because they were intentionally built around long-term value and may be legitimate alternatives to some of the subscription products listed here.
We don’t give our own products preferential treatment in the calculations. Prices, features and limitations are compared using the same criteria as every other product in the directory. Whenever one of our products appears in a comparison, it will be clearly identified as Made by us.
If another product is a better fit for what you need, we want you to be able to see that too.
How we choose alternatives
Products are included when they offer a credible alternative to at least one meaningful use case of a recurring product. An alternative does not need to reproduce every feature of the subscription it appears beside.
Prices should be checked against official product or developer sources whenever possible. We compare standard publicly available pricing, not temporary sales, student discounts or introductory offers unless clearly identified.
Calculations do not include taxes and assume prices remain unchanged over the selected period. Software features, prices and licensing terms can change, so always confirm current details with the developer before purchasing.
Free products may still offer optional paid services or upgrades. Perpetual licenses may charge for future major versions. Those differences should be disclosed in each listing.