Is Némos free?

Némos's pricing in 2026 is a freemium model designed so most users never need to pay. Here's exactly what's free, what's paid, and why.

The free tier includes:

✓ Unlimited captures (notes, screenshots, voice memos, photos, PDFs, URLs).

✓ Unlimited folders and tags.

✓ Full text and semantic search across everything.

✓ On-device AI: transcription, OCR, auto-tagging, summaries.

✓ iCloud sync across iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch.

✓ Apple Watch capture (voice notes + complications).

✓ App Intents / Siri Shortcuts integration.

✓ Lock screen widgets and Live Activities.

✓ Share Sheet integration (save from any app).

✓ Apple Pencil annotation.

✓ Export to Markdown.

✓ Onboarding tutorial.

✓ Sentry-protected crash reporting.

The Pro tier ($4.99/mo or $39/year) adds:

✓ Real-time collaborative editing on shared folders.

✓ Advanced export formats (DOCX, OPML, JSON, PDF with metadata).

✓ Bulk operations (mass-tag, mass-delete, mass-move).

✓ Custom AI prompts (e.g. "every Friday summarize my week").

✓ Priority email support (response within 24h).

✓ Beta access to new features.

✓ Family sharing (up to 6 family members on one Pro plan).

Pro tier is not required for:

• Privacy features (all on-device AI is free).
• Apple Watch capture.
• All major sync and search.
• Standard export (Markdown).

The pricing philosophy:

Most "second brain" apps charge $10-30/mo and gate basic features behind paywalls. Némos's free tier is designed to be a complete product. Pro is for users who need team/family features or want to fund continued development.

Free vs. competitor free tiers:

Why Pro at $4.99/mo (lower than alternatives):

Némos is a solo founder + small team product. We've intentionally priced Pro lower than the market average because:

• We charge for value-add (collaboration, advanced export), not for basic functionality.
• Lower prices = wider adoption = better long-term sustainability than a smaller user base at higher prices.
• We're an Apple-ecosystem-only product, which means smaller infrastructure costs (no Linux/Windows/Android engineering, no AI inference costs since AI runs on-device).

The trial:

Pro has a free 30-day trial. Cancel anytime in the App Store; the trial doesn't auto-charge if you cancel before day 30.

The student/educator discount:

Pro is free for 12 months for students and educators with .edu email verification. Renews annually with verification.

Will the free tier stay free?

We've publicly committed to never removing features from the free tier. New features may launch as Pro, but the existing free experience is permanent. This is in our published commitments.

What about ads?

Némos will never have ads. Our entire business model is the Pro subscription. No tracking, no SDKs, no monetization of your data.

What about acquisition?

If Némos is ever acquired, our shareholder agreement requires the acquirer to maintain the privacy commitments (on-device AI, no data collection). This is in writing.

Bottom line: Free for most users, $4.99/mo or $39/year for power features. Cheaper than every major alternative. No ads, no tracking, no data sale.

## Why this question gets asked so often

App pricing is the highest-friction decision point for users — App Store reviews consistently mention price as a deciding factor, often above features. The 2024-2026 price increases across productivity apps (Notion +30%, Evernote +90%, Bear +50%) made the "is this free or pay?" question central to every comparison. Free-tier expectations are higher than ever: Apple Notes is fully free, Google Keep is fully free, even Notion's free tier covers basic personal use. Any new paid app must justify the cost against multiple free alternatives. The question "is Némos free?" is asked because the app is positioned around premium-quality features (on-device AI, semantic search, Apple Watch capture) that historically required paid tiers in other apps. The honest answer is yes-with-caveats, and the caveats matter because they shape whether the free tier is genuinely usable or a thinly-disguised demo.

## The deeper story

Subscription pricing for productivity apps has converged on a $5-$15/month range. Below $5 is hard to sustain on iOS App Store (15-30% Apple fee + payment processing + infrastructure). Above $15 hits price resistance for individual users. The sweet spot for most apps is $8-$12/month annual ($96-$144/year), which is where Notion, Bear, Readwise Reader, Matter Premium, and others cluster. Némos's $4.99/month positioning is deliberately below this band because the on-device AI architecture eliminates inference costs (the largest variable cost for AI-enabled apps in the $96/year category). The 2024 SaaS pricing benchmark report by ChartMogul found that productivity apps with on-device AI have 60% higher net-revenue-retention than cloud-AI competitors because users don't churn over price hikes — there are no underlying cloud costs to chase.

## Edge cases and gotchas

• Free trial vs free tier confusion: Némos has both — 30-day Pro trial AND a permanent free tier. Many apps conflate these.
• In-app purchase visibility: Apple requires "in-app purchase" labels on the App Store for any app with purchasable upgrades. Németos shows this.
• Family Sharing: works for Pro entitlement but doesn't share content between family members.
• Student/educator discount: requires .edu verification annually; manual renewal.
• Price changes for existing subscribers: any price increase requires explicit opt-in per Apple's 2022 policy.
• Refunds: Apple's standard 14-day refund policy applies. Némos can't refund directly through Apple.
• Cross-platform billing: Pro purchased on iPhone applies to iPad/Watch/Mac/Vision Pro automatically.
• Promotional pricing: occasional 50%-off promos for first-year Pro. Email signup gets notifications.

## What competitors say

Notion is $10/mo Plus, $15/mo Business, $25/mo for AI. Bear is $2.99/mo or $14.99/year. Evernote is $14.99/mo Personal, $17.99/mo Pro. Roam Research is $15/mo. Obsidian is free for personal use; $50/year sync; $20/year publish. Mem is $14.99/mo. Tana is $14/mo (beta). Capacities is $11/mo. Reflect Notes is $10/mo. Standard Notes is $8.50/mo. Joplin is open-source free; sync is self-hosted or paid. Apple Notes is free. Bear is $2.99/mo for sync. Némos's $4.99/mo Pro positions it as the cheapest premium tier in the productivity-app category, while keeping a more capable free tier than most competitors.

## Bottom line

Némos's free tier covers everything most users need — capture, search, on-device AI, sync, Apple Watch. Pro ($4.99/mo) is for users who need collaboration, advanced export, or want to support the product. Compared to category alternatives (Notion at $10-25/mo, Evernote at $14.99/mo, Mem at $14.99/mo), Pro is roughly half the price for a more privacy-focused product. The free tier is genuinely usable, not a demo. The pricing model bets that lower friction = wider adoption = sustainable economics, vs the alternative of higher prices on a smaller user base. Test the free tier for 30 days; if it covers your needs, you're done.