getting down to brass tacks

Well, this is awkward.

I’ve been putting it off, but let’s talk about money. It’s time to rip off the band-aid.

Before we start, I just want to make it clear that, as of today, September 2026, in the year of our lord AD 2026, the app is still free. And it’ll remain free as long as we’re in beta. Which, for those of you who are not total IT nerds, means we’re still in the ‘testing’ phase. As I’m sorry to say, though, that phase should be coming to an end soon. At least, I hope it does.

We’re free now because I won’t charge users for software that’s not up to my standards for a live app. We’re working out the kinks, together, and as an aside, I’m grateful for each and every one of my early adopter beanies who’ve been helping (even passively) to unearth those fiddly little beanie bugs, issues, and errors.

That said, I’m still footing the bill. And as I may have mentioned (once or twice), we don’t harvest user data, run ads, or do any other revenue-generating things. So, at some point, Something’s Gotta Give, which is a fantastic movie with Jack Nicholson, Diane Keaton, Frances McDormand, Jon Favreau, and about 10 other absolute Hollywood legends that I highly recommend you watch if you’re in the mood to curl up on your couch with a blanket and some popcorn for a solid rom-com movie night. A top notch cast and a great film. In my (humble) opinion.

But getting back to the point - money. Here’s my plan: I spend, frankly, an ungodly amount of my mornings, evenings, and weekends, for months on end, building what is (possibly) the world’s greatest family and finance management software, and in return for that, you give me a little bit of your money. That’s the deal I’m proposing. I know, it sounds crazy.

There’s also a twist: If you like the software, but would prefer not to give your money to me directly, you can do that, too. Read more about my shrewd self-hosting business plan below (and one more perfectly valid reason my wife thinks I’m nuts).

Just about every cloud hosting provider provides a certain amount of free usage (which is usually called the ‘free tier’). My plan has always been to serve the app to users at no cost until we started exceeding those free tiers, and the bill became real money. Which, unfortunately (well, unfortunately for you), it has.

On the plus side, that means people are digging beanies, which is amazing, and awesome, and makes me happy. But, on the slightly less plus side (I like to keep my glass half full), while hosting is costing me real money, you can be a part of easing that cost by paying what is, hopefully, a fair price for an app you actually like.

Even more on the plus side: nobody will be charged out of nowhere. You get 90 days of the whole app for free, which starts from the day v1 lands. Yep, 3 full months, with the only limitation being the number of AI usages, since I gotta pay for those. At the end of those 90 days, if you decide beanies isn’t for you, no hard feelings - it simply goes read-only. Your data stays where it is (on your device or storage provider), and you can always choose to self-host or export it whenever you like. No data will be held hostage here.

On the also plus side (isn’t it great how positive we’re being today), if you are so inclined, you can even self-host the app and pay nothing to me (and probably a very small amount, or maybe even nothing, for your own hardware or hosting provider). There’s even instructions for how to do that on my github page, where you can see all of the heavily commented, scary AI-written (though human reviewed, mostly) code that makes beanies.family work.

So let’s get down to it. My pricing plans are live on the pricing page. Here they are below, as of right now. And if they change, you’ll be the first to know.

$30 / year for beanies basic, or $10/mo to include magic beans. or just skip all this, host it yourself, and use it for free. but that’s a pain, and you know it.

The main difference between the two tiers is the magic beans (which is my fairy-tale inspired name for AI features). With the magic beans tier, you’ll get more usage than you probably need, and with the basic tier, you’ll get 1 use per month (so you better use it wisely). It’s this way because our private and secure AI provider (which you can read more about here) charges based on consumption, which is directly linked to individual usage.

beanies.family will be priced competitively. We may not always be the cheapest, but if we’re not, it’s because buying privacy costs more than selling ads. Rest assured, I’ll keep prices reasonable, and always offer a basic tier at a low price.

📢 AND ONCE AGAIN: ALMOST FREE STUFF 📢

As I’ve said before, the first 10 people who download the app and add a public rating + review have my word that your price will be $1 per month, forever (we’ve almost reached that number, thanks to some awesome early beanies - just let me know that you’ve done it)! And for the rest of our early beanies, it’s a 50% discount, forever, just for being here before v1. More on how that works here.

So for those who’ve helped make beanies better just by being here, know that I appreciate everything you do, and your contributions will not go unrewarded. And together, we can make beanies.family the best software it can possibly be. Remember - with our powers combined, we are: CAPTAIN BEANIE!

Sorry, I got my signals crossed there for a minute. I meant: every bean counts.

Thanks for being here, my beans. You can look forward to lots of exciting announcements coming up, including some really cool updates on the beanie wall, app sharing, security, and more. Speak soon.

greg

btw - if you have any questions about pricing, or want to let me know you’ve left an awesome review (and claim your forever $1/mo prize), say hi to me on discord!