By Klaus Jakobsen, developer of A Decent Remote We launched A Decent Remote free, on purpose. A remote app has exactly one honest test: does it actually control your TV, your brand, your firmware, on your Wi-Fi? We wanted real households answering that before money entered the picture. This month, with the connection stack stable across thirteen brands, we turned pricing on for new users. This post is the whole reasoning, with the numbers, because pricing in this category has a deservedly bad reputation and we would rather show our work.
What the app costs now
$3.99 a month, or $12.99 a year. That is the entire price list. One subscription, every brand, every feature: the full remote, keyboard typing from your phone, waking the TV over Wi-Fi, app launching, custom layouts. Prices are in US dollars; Apple adjusts them per country.
The yearly plan is the one we would pick ourselves: $12.99 works out to about $1.08 a month, a 73% saving over paying monthly. The monthly plan exists for people who want to stay on a short leash, which after the category’s history is a completely reasonable way to feel.
If you were here early, you pay nothing, forever
We advertised this app as free while we proved it worked, and we meant it. Every install from the free era keeps the complete app, free, permanently. Not a discount, not a limited tier: the same full remote, forever, including if you delete the app and reinstall it later. Your phone remembers you were early even when the App Store does not.
This was the easiest pricing decision of the bunch. Early users did the unpaid work of telling us which TVs misbehaved. Charging them retroactively would be a strange way to say thank you.
New users: try the whole thing first, then decide
If you install today, nothing is locked at the start. Pair your TV, use the full remote, type with the keyboard, launch apps. The first 50 button presses are free, which in practice is an evening on the couch. We count actual use rather than starting a countdown clock, because a time-based trial punishes the person who pairs their TV and then travels for a week.
After 50 presses the remote locks and the subscription screen appears, and stays one tap away after that. No drip of bonus presses, no nagging mid-evening, and nothing paywalled before you have proof the app works with your TV. That last part is the line we care most about: you should never pay to find out whether pairing works.
Why we refused weekly pricing
Open the App Store and look at the top universal remote apps: $6.99 a week, $9.99 a week, usually behind a trial that converts on day 3. We went and read all ten listings: nine of the ten biggest sell a weekly plan, and eight of those nine put it first on the listing. Annualised, they run from $155 to $775. Weekly pricing exists because the number looks small and because it monetizes forgetting. It is the standard playbook in this category, it demonstrably makes more money than what we are doing, and we are not doing it.
$3.99 a month is not a charity number; it keeps the lights on if enough households find the app useful. But it is a number you can hold in your head, cancel in one tap, and predict on a bank statement. Apple handles the billing, the renewal terms are printed on the paywall in plain language, and the cancel path is the standard iOS one that no app can interfere with.
The honest summary
Free to try properly, $3.99 a month or $12.99 a year if it earns its place, and free forever for the people who were here before the price tag. If you have a TV brand we should support better before you would consider paying, tell us: brand requests from real households are still how this app gets built.
