$5 a year: what family and couples apps actually cost

A year of each, side by side, from each company's own page on 16 September 2026. Not to say the dearer ones are worse — they do different jobs — but because “a subscription” hides a range from nothing to several hundred dollars, and you should see the range.

Updated 16 September 2026.

What a year costs

Sources, all opened on 16 September 2026: cupla.app; Paired on the App Store; dateboxclub.com; mommypoppins.com. The DateBox yearly figures are twelve times the monthly price shown, for comparison only. Prices change; we recheck quarterly.

Why the range is so wide

Because the jobs are different. A box that arrives with a date inside it costs what a monthly parcel costs. An app that asks you a question a day is priced like other subscription apps. A newsletter is paid for by its advertisers. And a service that watches the weather and sends one message when a good day is coming costs almost nothing to run per person, which is why Perfect Day can be five dollars a year and still be a business. None of those prices is wrong. They are just not the same purchase.

$5 a year, in coffee

Perfect Day's price is one coffee, once, for the year — roughly what you would spend on the coffee you drink while checking the forecast for the fourth time about Saturday. The comparison is not entirely a joke. The thing the price buys is not weather data, which is free everywhere; it is not having to look, and being told once, days ahead, when the day is worth keeping.

What is free, and what free costs

The free options are genuinely good. Local newsletters will tell you what is happening; a shared calendar will tell you when you are both free; a weather app will show you all the weather, every day, for nothing. What none of them will do is decide. You still have to read the listings, check the forecast, judge whether Saturday is the good one, and remember to do all of that on Wednesday. Five dollars a year is the price of not doing the judging yourself, and of both of you hearing at the same time. Whether that is worth it depends on how often the good Saturday has gone past before you noticed. (More on the newsletters, and how the two fit together.)

What Perfect Day's $5 includes

• As many places as you like, each with its own idea of a good day.
• The next sixteen days checked every three hours against your conditions, hour by hour, across five weather models.
• One message when a day in the next ten matches, by email and on your phone if you allow it, to everyone on the account; one more if it falls through. Nothing else.
• A free month first, no card. Cancel through Stripe's own page; you keep what you paid for to the end of the year.