Two questions decide it: your history, and your group.

How to read the price table

The table below compares one app at three commitment lengths. Monthly renews every month and you can stop after one. Annual takes a single charge for the whole year, and the per-month figure printed next to it is that yearly amount divided by twelve for comparison — not an instalment. Lifetime is one purchase of one tier. A rough rule: monthly while you are still finding out whether two Macs really need this, annual once it has become routine, lifetime only when you already know which tier you want.

Every amount here is a US reference figure. Nothing on this page is confirmed as live in your country, and local offers and taxes can move the total either way. The App Store purchase sheet is the only place that shows what you will be charged, in your currency, with the renewal terms and your own eligibility — and it shows all of that before you confirm.

Trials, and what a lifetime purchase leaves running

The 7-day trial comes with eligible annual subscriptions and is granted at most once per subscription group, so moving between annual tiers does not buy you a second free week. Monthly and lifetime carry no trial. Neither this page nor the app can inspect your account beforehand, so the eligibility and renewal price Apple puts in front of you are the ones that count — not the figure you remember from here.

Here is the part that costs people money. Buying lifetime while a subscription is still running does not cancel or refund that subscription. They are two separate transactions and neither offsets the other, so the old plan keeps renewing until you go and manage it through Apple. Check what you are already paying for, and if you no longer want both, deal with it the same day.

Whose plan covers what

Two questions get tangled here and they have different answers. Group size and the content types a group may sync come from the administrator's plan — hold Pro as administrator and everyone else in that group receives files without buying anything, while folder sync specifically needs the administrator on Max. Personal history access is the other question, and it follows each person's own plan on their own Mac.

Every plan, Free included, gives you one group of your own. Free allows one other member in it, plus one group you have joined elsewhere. Pro and Max take both to 255 other members and ten joined groups. Which means a laptop paired with a desktop has already used the Free allowance, since that second Mac is the one other member. A third Mac, or a second invitation you accept, is where Free runs out.

What the Free history limit actually blocks

Searching is not the paywall, and that is the most common misreading of this page. On every plan you browse and search every record still retained on that Mac, across saved text, contact fields, file names and folder names. Reuse is what Free limits. The global latest 20 records, counted across all types together, open in full and copy normally. The ranking that picks those 20 runs before your search and type filters, and sensitive or unsaved placeholders take up slots in it, so the twentieth usable record can sit a lot closer than you expect.

Past that window an older record still appears in your results, but as a fixed text summary or a restricted image preview, and its copy button opens an upgrade prompt rather than writing to the clipboard. Pro and Max remove the count, so anything still retained opens and copies. What is still there at all remains a question of capacity, retention and your own deletions. Dropping back to Free later deletes nothing, and a group administrator's plan never unlocks your personal history.

If you cross an allowance

Nothing is deleted — sync pauses. Exceed the member allowance in the group you own and that group stops syncing while the groups you joined carry on. Exceed your joined-group allowance and it happens the other way round, with your own group untouched. Memberships and history stay put throughout, so removing a member, leaving a group or moving up a tier restores sync with nothing to rebuild.