Why Focal costs $99 once and not $10 a month

Focal, a screen recorder for Windows, costs $99 once. There is no monthly plan and there will not be one. The reason fits in a sentence: Focal uploads nothing, so I have no servers to run for you and no monthly cost to pass on.

My name is Vince. I make Focal on my own, so I also set its price on my own, in a pricing meeting with one attendee that still somehow ran long. Here is how I got to $99, and where a subscription would serve you better, because sometimes it would.

What $99 gets you

One license is for one person on up to 3 computers, and it includes every update I publish in the 12 months after you buy. When those 12 months end, the version you have keeps working, with no lock and no reminder asking you to pay. If you want another year of updates, an optional renewal costs $49. Commercial use is included, so a demo for your company or a course you sell needs nothing extra. Students, teachers and researchers get 40% off by email. If Focal is not right for you, you can have a refund within 14 days of buying, no questions asked, once per person.

Focal is sold through Polar, the merchant of record. Polar handles VAT and sales tax and emails you the receipt and an invoice, which matters when you buy on a company card and accounting asks what, exactly, a Focal is. The pricing page has all of this in one place.

Why not a subscription

There is no monthly cost to pass on

A subscription makes sense when a product costs money every month to keep running. A recorder that uploads your videos, stores them and streams them to viewers through share links has exactly that cost, and a monthly price is a fair way to pay for it. I wrote about when that kind of tool is the better choice in Focal vs Loom.

Focal does none of that. Recordings, edits and captions are made and kept on your computer, and nothing is uploaded. Even the captions come from a speech model that runs there. There is no account, so there is no account server. I explained why I built it that way in your screen recording should stay on your computer. The work happens on your hardware, not mine, and a monthly price would charge you for servers that do not exist. I could rent a few so the bill had something to point at. I decided against it.

A tool you use now and then should not bill you every month

Most people do not record their screen every day. They record a demo before a launch, a bug for a pull request, a tutorial when a feature ships. A few times a month, sometimes less. A subscription keeps charging through the quiet months, which is how everyone ends up with a line on their card statement they half recognize and keep paying, because canceling means remembering which email they used.

Here is the arithmetic, once. $10 a month is $120 a year, and $360 over three years. Focal is $99 once, less than one year of that, and the version you bought still works in year three. If you renew for updates every year, three years of Focal with every update cost $197.

I have to earn the renewal

A one-time price changes who carries the decision. With a subscription, paying is the default and stopping is the choice you make. With Focal, you pay once and nothing happens after that unless you decide the next year of updates is worth $49 to you. That is mine to earn, with updates that make your recordings better, not with a reminder or a lock. It is a comfortable arrangement for you and a mildly nerve-racking one for me, which is the right way around.

If a year goes by and the updates do not interest you, keep the version you have. It will keep working.

Why a year of updates and not updates forever

Focal keeps changing. Version 1.0.0 came out on 2026-11-02, and there is a lot I still want to add. Updates forever for one payment sounds generous, but it only works while new buyers pay for the work that old buyers receive, and that is a promise I could not keep honestly for years. I would rather promise you one good year and mean it than promise forever and hope.

A year of updates with an optional renewal keeps a one-time price honest for a product that keeps changing: you know what you paid for, and I know what I owe you.

Why three computers

Most people who record their screen use more than one computer: a desktop at the desk and a laptop for travel, or a work machine and a home one. A license for one computer would make you choose, or pay twice. Three covers the usual pair with one to spare, for one person. The spare is for the new laptop that arrives before you have retired the old one.

What a subscription does better

I do not think subscriptions are wrong, and sometimes one would serve you better than Focal’s price.

If you need a recorder for one project this month and never again, $10 for that month is less than $99. A subscription also spreads the cost out, and for the people who make the software it brings a steady income, which is a fair reason so many choose it. I am one of those people, and I will not pretend the steady part does not sound nice.

There is a trade-off in how Focal checks a license, too. Once a key is entered, Focal checks it with Polar about once a day, so it needs the internet now and then. It works offline for 28 days, which covers a long trip or a month of bad Wi-Fi, but not a computer that never goes online. After that, exporting pauses until a check succeeds, while recording and editing carry on. The last week is counted down, so the pause never comes without warning. If that check ever ends for good, the license agreement promises a version of Focal that runs without it, so the copy you paid for does not depend on the check staying around.

And a recorder built around the cloud gives you things Focal does not have: share links, viewer analytics, a team workspace. If those are what you need, a subscription to a tool made for them is money well spent.

The launch price and the trial

At launch, Focal is $79 instead of $99 with the code LAUNCH typed at checkout, once per customer. The license is the same: one person, 3 computers, 12 months of updates, and the version you have keeps working after that.

You do not have to decide before you try it. The free trial has no time limit: recording and editing work with every feature for as long as you like, with no card and no account. Exporting is what the license is for. Until you enter a key, no video or GIF can be exported and the editor’s preview shows a “Made with Focal” watermark, and a key turns exporting on and takes the watermark off. Your recordings stay on disk either way.

Record the thing you were going to record anyway, the demo you have been putting off since Tuesday, watch it in the preview, and see whether the result is worth $99 to you.