No paid Mac app dropped to free in the US Mac App Store today, October 7, 2026. That is the normal result rather than an unusual one, and the reason is worth stating plainly before you keep checking: Mac price cuts are far rarer than iPhone ones, and most Mac discounting happens somewhere the Mac App Store price cannot show it.
What follows is the measured evidence for that, then the one category of paid Mac software that did go free permanently and is still worth claiming if you have not. This page is rechecked daily, and any genuine price cut appears at the top with the price it fell from.
Best Mac Apps Gone Free Today
Nothing qualified. To be specific about what that means: 10,589 paid Mac apps were priced in four other Apple storefronts and then checked against the US store, and not one of them costs money abroad while being free in the United States. That is a clean sweep, and it is the clearest single measurement of how little the Mac App Store price moves.
The reasons are structural rather than seasonal, so a different day is unlikely to look very different.
- Much of the catalogue cannot go to zero at all. Mac software has moved to subscriptions and direct licences, and neither of those has a one-time App Store price to cut in the first place.
- Mac developers discount elsewhere. Bundle sales and a developer’s own store carry most Mac discounting, and neither changes the Mac App Store price.
- Apple equalises prices across countries. A developer who cuts a price usually cuts it everywhere, using the 900 price points described in Apple’s guide to setting an app price.
If you want free Mac software today rather than tomorrow, the section below is the honest answer, and it is a better one than most daily deals.
The Paid Mac Apps That Went Free for Good
The best known case of paid Mac software going free belongs to Apple, and it covers five apps at once. Pages, Numbers and Keynote were sold separately, and iMovie and GarageBand came in a paid iLife bundle. In October 2013 Apple announced that the redesigned iWork and iLife apps would ship free with every new Mac, and that GarageBand would be free for everyone on the then current OS X, which is set out in Apple’s own announcement of the next generation iWork and iLife apps. The new-Mac restriction was later dropped and all five are free to anyone today, as the history of the iWork suite records.
| App | What it does | What it replaces | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pages | Word processing | Microsoft Word | Free, permanently |
| Numbers | Spreadsheets | Microsoft Excel | Free, permanently |
| Keynote | Presentations | Microsoft PowerPoint | Free, permanently |
| iMovie | Video editing | An entry-level paid editor | Free, permanently |
| GarageBand | Music recording | An entry-level DAW | Free, permanently |
1. Pages
Price: Free, permanently · Rating: 4.6 out of 5 from 573,543 ratings · Deal status: Permanent, not a promotion
What it does. A full word processor with Apple-designed templates for reports, resumes and letters, shapes, tables and charts with preset styles, and real-time collaboration. It imports and edits Microsoft Word files, and works across iPhone, iPad, Mac and a PC through iCloud.
Who should get it. Anyone paying for an office suite out of habit. Apple’s own description confirms that creating, viewing and editing documents does not require a subscription, which is the question most people actually have.
2. Numbers
Price: Free, permanently · Rating: 4.6 out of 5 from 223,461 ratings · Deal status: Permanent, not a promotion
What it does. A spreadsheet app that starts from Apple-designed templates for things like a home budget or an invoice, and lets you place tables, charts, text and images anywhere on a free-form canvas rather than in one locked grid. It imports and edits Microsoft Excel and CSV files, and works from iPhone, iPad, Mac or a PC through iCloud.
Who should get it. Anyone whose spreadsheets are budgets and lists rather than pivot tables and macros. The canvas approach is the real difference from Excel, and Apple states that creating, viewing and editing does not require a subscription.
3. Keynote
Price: Free, permanently · Rating: 4.4 out of 5 from 83,353 ratings · Deal status: Permanent, not a promotion
What it does. Presentation software built around Apple-designed themes, with cinematic animations and transitions and real-time collaboration. It imports and edits Microsoft PowerPoint files, and runs on iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Vision Pro.
Who should get it. Anyone who presents occasionally and resents paying a subscription for it. The transitions are the thing people notice, and the PowerPoint import means you are not cut off from colleagues who use Microsoft.
4. iMovie
Price: Free, permanently · Category: Photo and Video · Deal status: Permanent, not a promotion
What it does. Video editing with a timeline, editing at resolutions up to 4K, and 29 templates for Hollywood-style trailers. Projects started on an iPhone or iPad drop into the Mac timeline so you can finish them on the larger screen.
Who should get it. Anyone cutting home video, a holiday reel or a straightforward YouTube upload. The ceiling arrives quickly if you need fine audio control or heavy compositing, but as a free editor it is well ahead of anything that shows up on a deals list for a weekend.
5. GarageBand
Price: Free, permanently · Category: Music · Deal status: Permanent, not a promotion
What it does. A recording studio with Drummer for produced drum parts, a Sound Library shaped through Smart Controls, and Amp Designer, Pedalboard and Bass Amp Designer for guitar and bass tones. Projects sync across Macs through iCloud, and songs started in GarageBand for iOS import directly.
Who should get it. Anyone recording an instrument or writing at home. It is the default first recommendation for beginners and it is free on every Mac, which makes paying for an entry-level recording app hard to justify.
Free on the Mac App Store Can Still Mean Subscription
The Mac has moved towards subscriptions harder than the iPhone, so a well regarded Mac app showing no price is now more likely to be a trial than a gift. Two of the best known examples:
- Ulysses, the long-form writing app, rated 4.6 from 2,127 ratings. It was a one-time purchase for years and is now a subscription, so the free download is a trial rather than the app.
- Fantastical, the best known third-party Mac calendar, also formerly a single purchase. There is a usable free tier, which is more than most conversions offer, but the features people switched for sit behind the paid plan.
Neither is doing anything underhand, and both are good software. The point is that a $0 listing price on the Mac App Store answers a different question from the one most people are asking.
Deals That Have Expired
Nothing to list yet, because nothing qualified today. When a Mac app does go free and then reverts, it appears here with the date it ended and the price it returned to, so a bookmarked page never leaves you guessing whether a deal is still open.
What You Keep After a Free Download
A Mac App Store download attaches to your Apple Account rather than the Mac, so it survives a new machine, a wipe and a migration.
- Open the App Store on the Mac and click your name at the bottom of the sidebar.
- Click Apps, then Purchase History, to see everything the account has taken.
- Click the download icon beside anything you want back.
Apple documents the same process across platforms in its note on redownloading apps from Apple. The limits matter more on the Mac than elsewhere: an app pulled from sale stays listed but may stop running after a macOS upgrade, and a Mac app bought directly from a developer is not in this list at all, so the licence email is your only record. Keeping those emails somewhere searchable is the single most useful habit for Mac software.
If a free utility is meant to fix a slow machine, check what is actually wrong first. Our guide to speeding up a slow Mac covers nine fixes that do measurable work, most of them already built into macOS. For the jobs people most often buy software for, several picks in our roundup of the best PDF editors run on macOS for nothing.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why are there no Mac apps gone free today?
Because Mac developers discount through bundles and their own stores rather than by changing the Mac App Store price, and because Apple equalises prices across countries, so a developer who does cut one usually cuts it everywhere at once. A check across four Apple storefronts covering 10,589 paid Mac apps found none that are paid elsewhere and free in the United States. A quiet day on the Mac is the norm, not a gap in the checking.
How do I find free Mac apps today without checking every day?
There is no Apple feed for it, so the realistic options are to keep a short list of the paid Mac apps you would actually buy and look at them occasionally, follow the developers directly because they announce their own sales first, and watch the bundle sites where most Mac discounting happens. This page runs the Mac App Store check daily so the store side is covered.
Which paid Mac apps became free permanently?
Apple’s own are the significant ones: Pages, Numbers, Keynote, iMovie and GarageBand were all paid software and are free on the Mac App Store today. Outside Apple, a permanent move to free usually means the developer has stopped active development, or has switched to a subscription so the download itself no longer costs anything.
Does a free Mac App Store download stay in my account?
Yes. Mac App Store purchases attach to your Apple Account, so anything taken at $0 stays in your purchase history and reinstalls on any Mac signed in to that account. This does not cover apps bought directly from a developer, where the licence key and that developer’s terms decide what you keep.
Where do Mac software discounts actually happen?
Mostly outside the Mac App Store. Developers who sell directly run their own sales, and bundle sites package several apps at a steep discount several times a year. That is why a Mac app can look like it never goes on sale while being discounted regularly somewhere the store price does not change.
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