Ask HN: What software subscriptions are worth paying for?
I try and keep subscriptions down to a minimum, although there are several that I think are essential to my workflow. I'm interest to know what everyone's essential subscriptions are.
Mine are Excalidraw, Mermaid, and ChatGPT. - FastMail for email, calendar, and contact book. - Kagi for search and translation. - rsync.net for backup (although I took their lifetime subscription offer so I no longer actively pay them). - Self-hosting related costs (rented servers and domain names). - Buttondown for sending out blog updates. (I was generously gifted a lifetime subscription, but had I not been I would likely have paid for it eventually anyway.) - The Economist for moderately-biased news spanning the entire world. I also pay for Spotify, though I increasingly doubt whether it is giving me more value than purchasing the music I want directly. I suppose I do it out of convenience rather than economic gain. This feels like a very HN set of subscriptions... ----- Things I don't pay for: - Excalidraw: I didn't even know that was possible. - Google Photos: it keeps bugging me to, and I keep intending to exchange it for Immich. - YouTube: I'm not a heavy YouTube user, but NewPipe and adblocker goes a long way. - LLMs: I find API credits to be better value. - VPN: I run OpenVPN on the closet server. That said, I have moved and I don't trust the new home ISP as much so this might change. - Password manager: KeePassXC and SyncThing is sufficient. - Notes: Org and Orzly and SyncThing is sufficient. - Cloud storage: SyncThing and a closet server is sufficient. Re Spotify: I think the greatest value is easy discovery. I wouldn't find 90% of the stuff I listen to in CD shops. Agreed - There certainly are other apps that provide better discovery, but nothing that is as seamlessly integrated to where I'm already listening to music. Nice list, I am going to start using SyncThing. My goal is to link my brother and myself as offsite backups. Is the reference to org, orgorg.com or something else? YouTube subscription is great but very overpriced. Streaming services are much cheaper and they produce original content. I just can’t justify double the price of Apple TV so I can watch content Google hasn’t produced. Yeah I begrudgingly paid increase when it went from $19 to $29 NZD a month. My friend in Aus just got an email saying they were putting his up to $39 from $29 a month… it’s not worth that to me. If anything it’s a great excuse to watch less on there. It’s not so much paying the cost, so much as the fact that Google charges double for content it didn’t create. It isn’t adding a lot of value. It’d make a lot more sense if it were Google maps, which adds tremendous value. YouTube subscription - Ever since they tied play/pause to the screen lock a subscription is essential if you want to use it as an audio only app. I hate it. If you're using a Samsung device then you can use Screen Curtain within Samsung's Good Guardians application on the Galaxy Store, which allows you to play media with the screen turned off. NewPipe. Brave fixes this. > - LLMs: I find API credits to be better value. I've spent $260 worth of API credits on my $20 Claude Code Pro subscription so far. Agentic stuff is probably the exemption to this because it chews tokens like nobody's business. For average prompting, API is the way to go. I've spent an average of around $7.50/mo between OAI and Claude, and that's using o3 and Opus for most queries. >Cloud storage: SyncThing and a closet server is sufficient. And if your house should be robbed or burned in a fire? >- Self-hosting related costs (rented servers and domain names). Who do you use, or recommend for server rental. Personally nothing - a one off payment for software is fine. Subscription based software - it's what I do for a day job but I'm not interested in any more monthly money drains than the bare minimum - ie mortgage, rates and utilities. On that category I paid for Fork (git client). You can pay to support the developers but the free version has the same features. Same, I even have a "pay as you go" phone deal which means I have a working mobile phone that can receive calls for €5 every 6 months (If I pay less than that it will be disconnected) People are commenting services as well, guess I'm adding to it. These are the only services I pay for. Google One. Google photos is just magic, cheaper storage elsewhere just doesn't cut it. Also why I won't be switching to ios anytime soon. First party solutions always feel better. Youtube Premium. Vote for Apple One here. Exceptional value if you have a few people sharing it. I just wish they wouldn't gatekeeper Apple Fitness with a geolock. I'm paying the same as the rest of the people, but can't use it because of ... reasons? We don't need localisation, I don't want the exercises to be in my native language, I can understand english just fine. I would imagine that because fitness+ involves heath data it is legally complicated to launch it everywhere at once. There are probably also licensing issues with the trainers and music across various jurisdictions that need to need worked out. It would be nice to get a token discount for features you can’t use though, you’re right fyi, Google Photos works great with iOS. I don't believe there are any missing features. Does it now auto backup without keeping the app open? Also does apple nag you to upload to icloud? I dont use icloud for photos and never get nagged about it. I do pay the 99 cents/month for extended icloud for general stuff. I never have to open google photos to sync, it just happens. That's pretty neat I subscribe to all three products from the Wallaby team. - Console Ninja. Inspect runtime values on any line of TS/JS code by putting breakpoints on the source. Inspect values, errors, and stacktraces next to their corresponding lines without leaving VSCode/Cursor. This works well with frontend or backend TS/JS, so in a NextJS app I can inspect anything without leaving the editor. No more checking console logs in Chrome dev tools. I found this tool invaluable when I switched to React and wanted insight into what data the components contained between renders. Also has a MCP server so Cursor can have access to all these runtime values and errors too. https://console-ninja.com/ - WallabyJS. Similar, but a test runner that runs tests as you type, and can display values and test failures inline. Also with a MCP server to give tools like Cursor feedback on runtime values and test failures inline data for quick iterations. https://wallabyjs.com/blog/wallaby-mcp.html - Quokka. Similar concept, but a TS/JS playground for prototyping code. Can temporarily install and later discard NPM dependencies for trying out libraries. Snaps allow fenced blocks of prototype code to be immediately evaluated inside existing codebases, then discarded when not needed. https://quokkajs.com/ I think Console Ninja and Quokka also have free versions with some Pro features missing. Those who have been around here for a while might remember Bret Victor presentations and the kickstarter for the LightTable IDE. To me, the Wallaby tools are effectively that. Runtime insight, inline as you develop. Obsidian Google (for Deep Research, Gemini and NotebookLM) ChatGPT (For ChatGPT and Codex) GitKraken CodeRabbit Novelcrafter (for fiction) Wondercraft (wrapper around Elevnlabs and Googles TTS) Seriously considering Elevenreader as well Raindrop (bookmarks) OutdoorActive (maps for hiking) YouTube Premium Sanebox (Email triage) Curious about GitKraken, I've tried it around ~2018 and couldn't see why i'd pay for it. I has nice "visualisations" but nothing that actually helped my workflow. I mostly use it because it makes rebasing a branch painless compared with CLI or the GitHub web interface. I was also using it at work when I managed a team because it let me see how their branches sat in relation to `main`. YouTube premium is equivalent to uBlock Origin Premium can't block shorts, auto-translate / auto dub, block channels, hide end-of-video cards. There are Firefox extensions that do all of those things. With one fee I can disable all ads for my whole family from every single device we use. IMO worth it vs. having to figure out why some video isn't working. Or being forced to watch a shitty 2 minute interstitial ad when watching Youtube from my Apple TV. That was my experience as well, but I pay for it. I think the family plan has great value if you have family members that wouldn't otherwise pay for it. Gifting others with less ads in their lives is a significant win. Why people always forget mobile? Firefox on mobile works with ublock. It can also play videos even with the screen locked, although you do have to unpause it after locking the screen. They do not -- NewPipe exists. What about Appletv and other tvs? iSponsorBlock for AppleTV, SmartTube for other TVs. Only on Android. uBlock Origin doesn't offer YouTube Music Outside Magazine. I know it's strange to include a magazine subscription here, but they keep buying software companies and giving their subscribers complementary access. I enjoy planning hikes with their Gaia GPS app. Essentials: my own domain for emails, Fastmail, Bitwarden, Google for 100GB of storage. Less essential: Obsidian, Kagi (this one may be bumped to the "essentials" at some point), a few VPS on Hetzner to run some projects, domain names for said projects. Just because I like them and want to support them: Signal - Claude Code as a programming aid.
- Fastmail for email.
- FacileThings as a personal management system.
- Obsidian with a personal knowledge system (you need to subscribe if you want your notes synced across all your devices).
- Office 365, even if it's just to sync all your files with OneDrive.
- Apple Music. JetBrains IDEs: https://www.jetbrains.com/ (free alternative: Visual Studio Code plus DB tools like DBeaver, or even their community versions) MobaXTerm: https://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/ (free alternative: mRemoteNG, PuTTY, Remmina) GitKraken: https://gitkraken.dev/ (free alternative: SourceTree, Git Cola) FreeFileSync: https://freefilesync.org/ (free, but I got the supporter edition because comfy software) In those cases, the free alternatives are just worse than the paid tools. Aside from that, mostly just VPSes (Hetzner, maybe Contabo if really on a budget) and domains (used to use NameCheap, Porkbun was kinda better, moved over to INWX cause EU option) which are good enough to run whatever FOSS I need instead of subscriptions, like Gitea and Drone CI/Woodpecker CI instead of other forges, Nextcloud instead of Dropbox, Sonatype Nexus instead of Docker Hub, Uptime Kuma and Zabbix and Matomo and Skywalking/GlitchTip instead of similar observability solutions, Grav instead of managed Wordpress for blogging, Kanboard/OpenProject instead of cloud Jira, RustDesk instead of RealVNC and so on. E-mail is a mixed bag: the free cloud ones are good enough for personal usage and self-hosted Docker mail server is better for no rate limits, e.g. alerts from my monitoring to my own address. Recently, some of the AI cloud subscriptions because getting my own GPUs in my homelab is beyond my means (maybe once Intel Arc Pro B60 are available): primarily Google's Gemini model or Claude's Sonnet although lower cost options would also be quite nice, maybe ERNIE-4.5 or Qwen3-Coder or whatever. I actually used to pay for GitHub Copilot but am also looking in the direction of just using the APIs of the various providers (or OpenRouter) directly to avoid fixes fees and have more lenient rate limits. For my life workflow, I pay for these because they add a lot of value for me: • Infuse, from Firecore (probably the best video player on Apple TV, iOS, iPadOS and macOS — you can throw almost any format at it) • Owl, by Beonex (it’s a Mozilla Thunderbird extension that connects to MS Exchange and costs $10 a year) • Bvckup 2 (Windows backup software) — this gets cheaper on renewals On services: • Apple Fitness+ (annual subscription is a lot cheaper than monthly), one of the best things that keeps me working out regularly • Posteo.de for emails Bvckup 2 is a fixed-cost perpetual license, not a subscription. Upgrades are paid for annually, but it's optional. +1 for Infuse, you can also purchase a lifetime subscription, I think it's worth it. Kagi, PurelyMail, and a VPS of your choice to host everything else you might need (I’ve settled on SSDNodes [1], good performance and pretty cheap). Probably also something for backups (Backblaze B2 or rsync.net seem decent). [1]: https://ale.sh/r/ssdnodes (affiliate link) I pay for GH Copilot, but mostly because I haven't bothered to stop. I'm probably going to switch to paying for Cursor. I used to pay for the following: Youtube Premium is brings qualify of life to a new level, though. No ads and off-screen playing rock. Firefox + uBlock Origin achieves the same thing Not possible when watching on a streaming stick. YouTube is nearly impossible to use outside a computer browser. Second this. For now at least, ublock on both my laptop (with Chrome no less) and in mobile, and zero ad problems. Claude Pro (Switched from Gemini Pro) Cloudflare domain, compute, db Apple 50GB Storage Google One Premium Family (Storage only, not AI) Youtube Premium PS Plus Cancelled: Spotify (youtube music is better for my needs) Google AI Fantastical - I came full circle to Google Calendar I've bought quite a few useful mac and ios apps on one time payment. I'm interested in rsync.net and maybe setup a self hosting with my friends and family. root server and mullvad. everything else i buy perpetual or I look for alternatives if that option doesnt exist Open source projects and their maintainers. Which ones? All the ones you rely on, and their dependencies. Or if you have lots of money, then all the ones you have installed, and their dependencies. > All the ones you rely on, and their dependencies. How much are you spending? Nothing. I'm an open source maintainer, I have zero income right now, and very little savings, so I can't afford to share with other maintainers. Kagi, an absolute must for me these days. Fastmail and HEY email,
Kagi,
1Password,
Newsblur,
Perplexity,
Wolfram (Mathematica),
Zotero,
Dropbox,
Backblaze,
Microsoft Office,
Raindrop.io,
Wachete (track changes on webpages) == I also pay for Google but that’s just ransom for my data held hostage by them because I have shared that email address with many. I pay (personally) for Postico and ChatGPT. I pay for Mullvad for my VPN of choice, and Eweka and Drunkenslug for newsgroups (i.e. every media ever invented downloaded at maximum speed) Bitwarden for personal password management x.com sub to get rid of the ads youtube pro to get rid of ads You don't like ads lol Anything you rely on. Mail (Fastmail), search (Kagi), storage (B2), and a few vps. Personal: 1Password, Google One, Chatgpt For work: Snagit, Aptakube, Jetbrains I'm currently paying for... Obsidian Sync (Notes) pCloud (Cloud Backup and Sync) Pandora (Music) ChatGPT (Misc) ProtonVPN (VPN) NameCheap (Domains/Hosting) DigitalOcean (Hosting) Interesting... it took me longer to think through this list then I feel like it should have. I see very few mentions here of backup software for storing your personal files remotely. Do so few of you do such a thing? I use BackBlaze. Cheap and reliable. nord/mullvad, bitwarden, claude code (max), openai, youtube music, google drive (for the storage space). Got a few lifetime payments too for various desktop utility apps I pay for other ones on an as needed basis, but my tools change based on what i'm working on. Usually always have a render and supabase plan going for various hosted toy apps. Used to pay for a VPS, besides that nothing. intellij, proton, ps+, youtube premium I try to not have too many subscriptions, right now I’m using and paying for: - Raycast Pro - Proton (mostly for mail and pass) - Deezer - Instapaper Premium - Feedbin Paid by my employer: - Windsurf (but might try something else) - OVPN > Raycast Pro Why? Backblaze as encrypted cold storage for backups. 1£ VM at 1&1 as Wireguard gate. Mullvad, tailscale, bitwarden Obsidian Sync mathacademy - learn math
chatgpt - make problem sets and personal tutoring
mullvlad - vpn - chatGPT plus - Perplexity and nothing more. I get why people like to charge a subscription, but I will not pay a subscription for something that doesn't have ongoing operation cost by the vendor. If he needs to pay for a storage/servers/compute monthly it's reasonable to ask for a subscription. However a subscription for a screenshot app? Really? It's on my computer, charge me once or I won't pay the "just 10$/month" == 120$/year for a screenshot app is waaay overpriced. Why Perplexity when you're paying for ChatGPT+? None of them, eventually. Fastmail, Mullvad, a VPS Sublime (contribution rather than subscription) Excalidraw ChatGpt ExpressVPN What makes you pay for Sublime instead of sticking to free tools like Notion? Sublime is a text editor https://www.sublimetext.com/ > ExpressVPN Why, when Mullvad exists? Adobe Creative Cloud mullvad, 1Password, fastmail for me None. Usenet Proton,Mullvad Doesn't Proton include a VPN?
I will never pay for * Home Designer Pro (upgraded to fully purchased at some point)
* JRebel (circa 2010ish)
* Youtube Premium