BalanceWright costs $9.99 one time. There is no monthly charge, no yearly charge, and no renewal that shuts your register off if you skip it. One payment is the whole of it.
What "once" actually means
The unlock is a one-time purchase in the App Store and the Play Store. The stores have a name for that kind of purchase, and it means the same thing in both: bought once, cannot expire. It attaches to the store account you already use, not to a phone and not to a version number. Get a new phone, sign in to that same store account, tap Restore purchase, and the unlock comes back.
BalanceWright itself has no account to create and no email to hand over. The only sign-in anywhere near this is the store one you already had.
The app never shows a price of its own. It asks the store what this costs in your country and shows that answer. Until the store replies, the price line shows a dash and the Pay button stays turned off. A made-up number on the screen that asks for money is the exact thing this app is built against.
No version 2 to buy again
Two fears come with a one-time price, and both are fair.
The first is that a subscription arrives later. This product has a written scope with a list of things it will not do, and subscriptions are on that list, in the same line as ads and bank logins. The word the line uses is ever.
The second is a "BalanceWright 2" on the store that owners of the first one have to buy fresh. Your unlock is not tied to a version, so ordinary updates to this app do not ask for payment again. The features still to come are planned as updates to this app, not as a second app with its own price.
Reviewers in this category report paying for premium and still getting ads. On that one the answer is short. There is no advertising code in this app, so there is nothing in it that could show you an ad.
Export, printing and backup work before you pay
The two screens that get your records out of the app do not check whether you have paid. Neither file contains that check anywhere in it.
- A printable register as a PDF, for the account you have open and a date range you pick. This year, last year, a quarter, a month, or dates you type yourself.
- A spreadsheet file (CSV) for that same account and the same range. It opens in Excel, Numbers, or Google Sheets, one row per entry. To export a different account, switch to it in the register first.
- A copy of your whole register, made once on each day you open the app. It is kept inside the app, and copied out to a folder you choose once you point the app at one. Restoring puts a copy you pick back in place.
Here is what happens once the trial runs out. You cannot write new entries until you unlock. Everything already in the register stays readable, searchable, printable, and backed up. The records are yours whether or not you ever pay.
The free trial, stated plainly
It is not free forever, and it is not a thirty-day clock. There is no clock in it at all. It runs until you have balanced one statement, with a limit on entries as a second stopping point, and whichever of the two comes first is the one that ends it.
- Reconcile a statement, matching at least one entry against it, and the trial is used up. That includes a statement you closed with a balancing adjustment, because that is still a statement you balanced.
- If you never reconcile, you get 100 entries first. That number can be raised, never lowered.
- Nothing is held back while the trial runs. Entry, reconcile, search, recurring bills, transfers, export, and backup all work from the first day.
- Coming from another app with years of history: one import comes in whole, past the 100-entry limit, up to 2,000 rows. All of it or none of it, never part of a file.
So you find out whether this app can balance your checkbook before you spend anything on it. That is why the trial ends there, and not on a timer.