---
title: "Why Galley Is Buy-Once, Not a Subscription"
description: "Most writing tools now rent by the month. Galley is €199, paid once, with every feature and every future update included. Here's the reasoning, and the maths."
source: https://usegalley.com/blog/why-galley-is-buy-once
---
Share Copied

# Why Galley Is Buy-Once, Not a Subscription

May 29, 2026 [Galley](https://usegalley.com/blog/tag/galley)

![A single price tag beside a crossed-out monthly bill](https://usegalley.com/images/blog/why-galley-is-buy-once.png) TL;DR You can't predict how many words you'll write this month, so paying monthly rent for a tool you use in bursts never made sense. Galley is €199 once: every feature, every export format, every future update, unlimited books, no tiers, no metering. There's a 14-day no-questions refund, and if Galley ever shut down you'd get a full export and the source. You own the tool, not a lease on it.

Some months you write every day. Some months the manuscript sits untouched while
life happens. Paying rent on a tool you use in bursts never sat right with me, so
Galley doesn’t work that way.

## The maths nobody does

A subscription writing tool runs you, say, €10 to €15 a month. Feels small. Now
be honest about how long a book actually takes. Two years is normal, three isn’t
unusual, and plenty of novels take longer.

Three years at €12 a month is €432, and at the end of it you own nothing. Stop
paying and you lose access to the tool you wrote your book in. Galley is
[€199 once](https://usegalley.com/#pricing), and after that book, the next one, and the one after that
cost you nothing more. The break-even against a subscription arrives well before you’ve typed
“The End” the first time.

## What €199 once includes

Everything. Every feature, every export format, every future update, unlimited
books, unlimited chapters, unlimited versions. No tiers, nothing metered, no
“upgrade to export [EPUB](https://usegalley.com/glossary#epub).” I find tiered pricing on a writing tool a bit insulting,
because it charges you more to finish the book you’re already paying to write.

## Why not a free tier either

Because a free tier is almost always one of two things: you’re the product and
your data is the payment, or it’s a deliberately crippled version built to nag
you into upgrading. I don’t want either. Galley doesn’t track you, doesn’t sell
anything about you, and [never trains on your prose](https://usegalley.com/blog/no-ai-in-your-prose),
and the cleanest way to promise that is to just charge a fair price once and be
done.

## What happens if you stop, or if I do

Fair questions both.

- **If you change your mind:** 14 days, no questions, full refund.

- **Any time:** a [full export of your work](https://usegalley.com/docs/your-data), so your book is
never trapped in here. The commitments behind that are collected on
[hard to lose, easy to leave](https://usegalley.com/features/your-work-is-safe).

- **If Galley ever shut down:** six months’ notice and an open-source release,
so the tool outlives the company.

You pay once, and Galley is yours whether the book takes one year or five. That’s
what buying something is supposed to mean.

## More on galley

- [Galley for Self-Publishing](https://usegalley.com/blog/galley-for-self-publishing)What self-publishing a novel in Galley involves: a print-ready interior PDF, a valid EPUB, a tuned file per store, and two checks that run before you upload to KDP.
- [Galley for Traditional Publishing](https://usegalley.com/blog/galley-for-traditional-publishing)Querying agents or working with an editor: standard manuscript format, the submission package, watermarked beta drafts, and getting an editor's Word comments back where they belong.
- [Is Your Writing Being Used to Train AI?](https://usegalley.com/blog/is-your-writing-used-to-train-ai)How to find out what your writing app is allowed to do with your manuscript: the licence grant, the improve-our-services clause, the sub-processor list, and what no hosted tool can honestly promise.

[Every galley post](https://usegalley.com/blog/tag/galley)

[← All posts](https://usegalley.com/blog)

Galley is the tool that does the part this post is about — the finished, printable book.

[Launch Galley](https://app.usegalley.com)