CompileNorth / Journal

Monthly, yearly or lifetime: how to pick

September 29, 2026

Our apps are free to install, and Pro is sold three ways: monthly, yearly and a one-time lifetime licence. The prices differ per app, but the trade-off is the same everywhere.

Pick monthly when the need is a moment

Monthly suits a one-off project: a batch of scanned contracts, a single month of invoices, a conference’s worth of recordings. Subscribe, finish the work, and cancel through Microsoft when you are done. Nothing is lost on the free plan when it ends.

Pick yearly when it is part of the job

If the tool shows up in your week every week, yearly costs far less than twelve monthly payments and removes the annual decision from your calendar. It is the sensible default for a working professional.

Pick lifetime when it is infrastructure

The lifetime licence is a single payment for a permanent licence tied to your Microsoft account. It makes sense when the app is something you expect to keep installed, when you dislike recurring billing, or when a purchase has to go through a budget that does not allow subscriptions.

Things worth knowing before you buy

Pick the smallest plan that covers the work you actually have. You can always move up later.