Most desktop pets are free. Ours is not.
It is a fair thing to raise. Look through the Mac App Store and most desktop pets are free, or a pound or two, and some of the best-loved ones — BongoCat, Desktop Goose, Shimeji — cost nothing at all. We charge a plan and $9.99 a character. Here is the honest case for that, and the cases where you should keep your money.
What the free ones actually are
Almost all of them are 2D: sprite sheets and looping animations, often lovely, usually made once and left alone. The best of them are open source and maintained by one person in their own time, which is a gift to everybody and also means nobody owes you a fix. The classic Shimeji still needs Java, and its most convenient Mac build dates from 2022. That is not a criticism — it is what free work looks like, and we have all relied on it.
What is different here
Every buddy is a rigged 3D model, not a flipbook: a skeleton with joints for the fingers, hands that actually hold a mug or a cable, dozens of separate activities, longer stories made of several of them in order, and eight moods that change the face. They are drawn live, from every angle, at the size you choose. That is a different sort of work from a sprite sheet, and it is ongoing — new activities keep arriving for the buddies you already own, at no extra cost.
And the unglamorous parts
The app is signed with an Apple Developer ID and notarized by Apple, so it opens without a scary warning. It updates itself. Your characters are encrypted to your account and your Mac. There is a real person to email when something breaks, and there is a refund policy that puts right the things it should. Those cost money every year whether anybody buys anything or not.
What it costs, plainly
A plan and then each buddy once. Nothing else is hidden: no ads, no upsell in the app, no character you own and then lose. The App Store shelf is cheaper, though there is at least one app there charging exactly what we do for a single character, so we are not the most expensive thing in the category either.
When you should not pay us
If you want a laugh rather than company, take Desktop Goose — it is pay-what-you-want and it is funnier than we are. If you want a cat that drums while you type, BongoCat is free and excellent. If you want fifty pixel animals for the price of a coffee, browse the App Store. Paying for a desktop companion only makes sense if what you want is a character with some craft in it that keeps growing. If that is not you, we would honestly rather you kept the money.