Free. Not freemium, not a trial. Just free.
Every feature of Mutka is free for everyone, forever. There is no pro tier waiting behind a paywall, no license key, no account, no subscription that quietly renews. This page explains why, in my own words, since it's a personal decision as much as a technical one.
I grew up on free software
I'm simply not used to paying for software; I grew up on the free side of computing. Like a whole generation, I spent years on WinRAR's famous 40-day trial that never quite ended, editing images in Paint.NET, living on free players, free editors, free tools built by people I'd never meet. I received an enormous amount from that culture without ever being asked for a card number.
Mutka is my turn to give back. I'd rather receive and give for free within a community than sell to it. That's the whole philosophy. The same spirit shapes the architecture: everything is a module precisely so the community can give features to each other, not buy them from me.
What "free" means here
Not a launch promo, not a freemium funnel. The full app, for everyone.
No subscription
Nothing renews, nothing expires. The version you download is yours for good.
No pro tier
There is one Mutka. Every feature ships to everyone, with nothing held back for a paid edition.
No license key
No activation, no seat counting, no email wall. Download, open, use.
No account
Mutka doesn't know who you are and doesn't need to. There's nothing to sign up for.
Why I can afford to give it away
Honestly? Because Mutka costs me nothing but time. It's a local-first desktop app: it runs entirely on your Mac, against your files. There is no server to rent, no infrastructure to keep alive, no per-user cost that grows with downloads. An app with zero marginal cost doesn't need a subscription to survive. Subscriptions exist to feed servers and payrolls, and Mutka has neither.
The modular architecture is the other half of the answer. I don't have to fund a team to build every feature users ask for: the community (or an AI) can build them as modules, and the permission sandbox makes accepting those contributions safe. A product that grows by gift doesn't need a price.
Open source keeps the promise honest
"Free forever" is easy to say and easy to walk back, unless you give up the ability to walk it back. Mutka is MIT-licensed: the source is public, anyone can build it, fork it, or keep it alive without me. Even in the worst case (I lose interest, I disappear, I sell out), the version you have stays free and the community can carry it on. Compare that with the subscription-only alternatives, where the app stops working the day you stop paying.
Frequently asked
Will there ever be a paid tier or a subscription?
No. There's nothing a paid tier could pay for: Mutka has no servers and no staff. The full app is free for everyone, and the MIT license makes that irreversible in practice.
How do you make money from Mutka, then?
I don't, and that's fine. I'm a senior software engineer and I run other companies; Mutka is what I give back to the community I took so much free software from. Donations are accepted but never required.
Doesn't a free app mean I'm the product?
Not here. Mutka has no account, no ads and nothing to sell about you. Anonymous usage telemetry exists but is strictly opt-in, and the code is public, so you can verify all of this instead of trusting it.
How can I support the project without money?
Star the repository, report bugs, tell a friend, or best of all, build a module. A community module is worth more to Mutka than any donation.
Sources & further reading
The culture and economics behind the decision, for the curious.
- 1WinRARwin.rar GmbH
The legendary never-ending trial, and the freeware culture a whole generation (me included) grew up on.
- 2Paint.NETgetpaint.net
A free image editor that millions of people used instead of Photoshop. Another piece of the free-software ecosystem I grew up on.
- 3The MIT LicenseOpen Source Initiative
The license Mutka ships under: the legal mechanism that makes "free forever" more than a promise.
- 4Local-first softwareInk & Switch
The research essay on software that runs on your device instead of someone's server; it's why Mutka has no infrastructure bill.
- 5