Pricing
A podcast app without a subscription
Podcasts are free, the player costs a monthly fee. Plenty of people find that mismatch annoying, and rightly so. There's a technical reason for it, and that reason disappears when processing happens on the device.
Why AI podcast services almost always require a subscription
Transcribing and summarising episodes in the cloud costs money per operation: GPU compute, storage, bandwidth. Those costs recur and grow with usage. A one-time purchase simply doesn't work in that model. A user who processes episodes daily for ten years would cost a multiple of what they paid once. The subscription there isn't greed; it's arithmetic.
Run the same processing on the iPhone and that cost block disappears. You bring the compute yourself; the vendor incurs no recurring per-episode cost. That's precisely why a lifetime purchase is offerable at all for an on-device app.
What's free in Podknow
The player is complete and permanently free: no account, no ads, no time limit and no features that vanish after two weeks:
- Subscriptions, library, queue, sleep timer and filters
- Offline downloads including auto-downloads and automatic cleanup
- Publisher transcripts from the feed, in full
- All listening statistics with goals, streaks and the year in review
- Widgets, Siri shortcuts and CarPlay
- OPML import and export plus backups
- Private and password-protected feeds
What Premium unlocks
Premium covers the features that genuinely require development effort and on-device compute:
- On-device transcription for episodes without a publisher transcript
- AI summaries and automatically generated chapters
- The knowledge assistant with jump marks into the audio
- Full-text search across all transcripts
- iCloud sync across multiple devices
Premium is available monthly, yearly or as a one-time lifetime purchase. Current prices are on the App Store, always accurate and in your currency, which is why we deliberately don't print numbers here.
Which option makes sense?
The monthly plan suits trying things out over a few intense weeks. The yearly plan fits if you use the AI features regularly but not permanently. The lifetime purchase pays off once you expect to use the app for more than roughly two years. It is also the option with no recurring charge and no renewal date to watch.
What to check when an app says “no subscription”
Free isn't free
Apps with no payment model at all usually monetise through ads or data. A paid product without tracking is often the more honest deal.
Lifetime has to mean lifetime
Some “lifetime” purchases only cover one major version. In Podknow it's access to the app's Premium features, not a time window.
The free tier has to be usable
A player that does nothing without a subscription is a demo. Podknow stays a complete podcast player without Premium.
No forced account
Neither free nor paid use requires an account. The purchase runs through your Apple ID.
And if you never want to pay?
Then Podknow still is a full player with downloads, statistics, CarPlay, widgets and the transcripts podcasts ship themselves. There's no trial that expires and no nag screen pushing an upgrade. If you don't need the local AI, you use the app for free indefinitely. That is meant literally.
Frequently asked
A podcast app without a subscription
Is Podknow really available without a subscription?
Yes. Premium is also sold as a one-time lifetime purchase. And if you only use the player, you pay nothing at all.
What does Premium cost?
Current monthly, yearly and lifetime prices are shown directly on the App Store, in your currency and always up to date.
What happens if I cancel a subscription?
The player, your subscriptions, downloads and statistics remain fully usable. Only the local AI features and iCloud sync lock again. Transcripts already generated stay on the device.
Does the lifetime purchase cover all my devices?
The purchase is tied to your Apple ID and can be restored on your devices, as usual for App Store purchases.
Is the free player time-limited?
No. There's no time limit, no advertising and no feature that disappears after a trial.
Listen to podcasts. Keep the knowledge.
Podknow is free on the App Store. Add Premium whenever you like.
Free for iPhone & iPad · AI features as a Premium upgrade, subscription optional (lifetime)
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