How does Paste compare with other Clipboard Manager apps?
4 apps · 6 factors
Scored for the goal: Find a Mac clipboard manager that keeps searchable history, syncs across my Macs and does not require a subscription.
Quick answer
From the sourced cells below · nobody pays for a position
Free to use
Maccy
Free on the official website
Compare
One judgement per cell. Click a row to read every app’s answer; click a cell to open that answer’s sources.
 67%Misses Current price | 67%Misses Clipboard history sync |  67%Misses Clipboard history sync | 67%Misses Clipboard history sync | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Features | ||||
| Clipboard history syncYes★ | ✓ | No | No | No |
| History Depth | Unlimited clipboard history, governed… | Default: 200 unpinned items;… | Time-based: choose 24 hours,… | CopyClip 2: up to… |
| Purchase | ||||
| Current priceNo subscription★ | $26.99/yr +4 | $9.99 once | £34 once +1 | $7.99 once |
| Launcher | ||||
| Clipboard historyYes★ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Trust | ||||
| Privacy / data handling | Clipboard history, pinboards and… | Clipboard history stays locally… | Local | Clipboard history stays locally… |
| Product | ||||
| What it does | Clipboard manager | Clipboard manager | MacOS launcher + automation… | CopyClip 2 saves every… |
Head to head
Two apps side by side, full answers, nothing truncated. Swap either side.
Yes — clipboard history and Pinboards sync between Macs through private iCloud. Sign in with the same Apple Account and enable Settings → General → iCloud sync on each Mac; sync is off by default. Included with subscriptions, Lifetime and the 7-day trial. Personal plans cover all personal devices; no numeric sync-item cap is documented. Large initial histories can take several minutes.
No — saved history stays on each Mac; no built-in history sync or sync plan. Maccy can capture individual copies received through Apple Universal Clipboard.
Unlimited clipboard history, governed by retention: 30 days by default. On Mac, Settings → General → Keep History offers 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, 1 year or Forever. Older unpinned items expire; pinned items and Pinboards remain regardless of the retention setting. No numeric item cap is documented.
Default: 200 unpinned items; adjustable from 1–999 in Storage settings (`historySize`). Pinned items do not count toward this limit.
Website: Personal USD $29.99/year; Monthly and Lifetime offered, current prices unverified (previously published $3.99/month and $99.99 once); Teams monthly rate unverified, or $26.99/seat/year at five seats ($134.95/year total), with volume discounts at 5 and 10 seats. Mac App Store (US): free download with 7-day subscription trial; USD $3.99/month; $29.99/year; Family $59.99/year for up to six people; Lifetime $99.99 once, including future updates; Legacy $9.99 listed, interval and eligibility
Website: free, full app; Mac App Store (US): USD 9.99 one-time app price. No advertised subscriptions or per-seat plans; App Store purchase supports development.
Yes — automatically saves copied text, links, images and files into searchable history. Open Paste and type, or press Command-F; search includes pinned items and text inside images. Retention defaults to 30 days and can be set to Forever. Included with paid plans and the 7-day trial.
Yes — open with Shift–Command–C or the menu bar icon, type to search saved copies, and select an item to reuse it. Free app; default history is 200 unpinned items, adjustable to 999.
Clipboard history, pinboards and search index stay locally on your Mac; optional sync copies them to your private iCloud, never Paste’s servers. Separately, Paste collects analytics described as anonymized through EU-hosted PostHog (including device identifiers, approximate location, subscription details and usage events) and anonymized crash reports through Sentry. Intelligent Clipboard processes context locally; it requires Screen Recording permission but stores or sends no screen content. En‘
Clipboard history stays locally on your Mac; the App Store states it never leaves the device. The developer declares no app data collection (not verified by Apple). Follows password-manager clipboard removals and ignores confidential/temporary clipboard types by default. You can pause capture, skip the next copy, delete individual entries, or clear history including pinned items. Automatic pasting requires Accessibility permission.
Paste is a clipboard manager for Mac, iPhone, and iPad that remembers everything you copy and keeps it organized, searchable, and in sync across your devices.
Clipboard manager for macOS which does one job - keep your copy history at hand. Lightweight. Open source. No fluff.
Cost over time
Plays from month 1 to year 10 when you scroll here. Each bar is split by year; a one-time purchase stays one block.
Every subscription now costs more than Alfred, the cheapest one-time purchase.
Releases
Each dot is a release. The hatched bar runs from the last release to today; its color says whether that gap is normal for the app.
1 of 1 app with a dated changelog is behind its usual pace. Furthest behind: Alfred, 199 days since its last release (usually ~64).
Score
A reference score weighted by the priorities set for this research. Nobody pays for placement.
Reference score
Priority-weighted · 100% evidence · 3 must-have · 0 important
Sources
Where every claim comes from, when it was checked, and how to report an error.
How this report was made
Every cell links to the page it came from. Nobody pays to change a score.
- Report ID
- TMA-1EY4ETV
- Sources
- 41
- Verified cells
- 24/24 (100%)
- Last checked
- Oct 15, 2026
- Reading saved
- ≈ 2.5 h
Scoring
Must-have factors weigh 5 and important ones 3; only these are scored, or the first five factors if none are marked. An app earns a factor's weight only when a cited source confirms it, and unknown cells count for no one. A pick is named only when the lead is larger than everything still unresolved could swing. Reading time assumes about 4 minutes per source. Full methodology
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