How to Get Powerful Productivity Apps on the Cheap
Two proven ways to unlock top productivity apps on a budget: Setapp’s all‑you‑can‑eat subscription and Lenny’s Product Pass with a year free of flagship tools like Linear, Granola, and Lovable.
How to get world‑class macOS productivity apps for (almost) peanuts
If you’re building a lean, battle‑tested toolkit on macOS without burning cash, check out these two routes that I use to get access to a ton of productivity and AI tools for next to nothing:
Setapp: an all‑you‑can‑eat subscription that unlocks hundreds of high‑quality Mac and iOS apps for a single monthly fee:
Lenny’s Newsletter Product Pass: an annual newsletter membership that includes a year free of a growing bundle of premium tools used by modern product and growth teams.
One of the reasons I love the macOS platform is the ecosystem of apps from indie developers - opinionated, innovative, and occasionally quirky.
Setapp is the epitome of this ethos, bundling 260+ curated Mac and iOS apps under one monthly or annual subscription, with free updates, no ads, and an ever‑growing catalogue. It’s one of the best deals in tech and run by Ukraine-based indie developer MacPaw, maker of great apps like Clean My Mac and ClearVPN (more on these later).
Setapp apps I couldn’t live without
I use a bunch of apps from Setapp in my daily toolkit - here are some of my favourites:
Paste: a superb clipboard manager that syncs history and pins across Mac and iOS devices. Saves me so much time.
TablePlus: a fast, native SQL IDE for Mac. The fastest SQL client I’ve ever used.
CleanShot X: best‑in‑class screenshots, scrolling capture, GIFs, and tidy screen recordings. Its share links are brilliant for quick reviews. Also does sharp OCR on captured text, and lets you beautify your screenshots with backgrounds, shadow effects, and more.
FocuSee: A more recent discovery for me, this is AI‑powered screen recorder that turns raw captures into polished demos with almost no editing. Features include auto‑zoom to keep attention on clicks and key areas, optional click sounds that I find really satisfying, AI removal of pauses and filler words, AI voice enhancement and noise reduction, and one‑click resizing for every major social media platform.
CleanMyMac: keeps your Mac fast by removing junk, freeing space, and running maintenance jobs.
GetAPI: a Mac‑native, lightweight Postman alternative for quick API calls. I work with APIs all the time, and GetAPI is so fast and clean - I love it.
Substage: control Finder using natural language translated into safe terminal commands with your own OpenAI key.
If you use even two or three of these apps, Setapp often costs less than buying and maintaining them individually.
It’s also a discovery engine: whenever I need a new app to get a specific job done, Setapp is now the first place I look. 9 times out of 10, I find something that fits my needs without having to spend a single extra dollar.
Lenny’s Newsletter and the Product Pass bundle
Lenny’s Newsletter is one of the best resources on product and growth. It’s actually a bit of a misnomer, because the newsletter is more or less just a distribution mechanism for the excellent podcast, in which Lenny Rachitsky interviews world-class product and growth leaders.
But on top of the newsletter and podcast, paid annual subscribers get the Product Pass - a rotating collection of premium tools you can claim for a year free, with new products added over time.
A sample of what’s included right now
Granola: still, in my opinion, the best AI‑powered meeting notes and summarisation app. You can get it free for up to 400 users for the first year, which could be worth up to $10K.
Linear: a beautiful, fast, and modern issue tracker that all self-respecting product teams should use. It’s basically Jira, but good.
Lovable, Bolt, Replit: vibe code to your heart’s content. I admittedly haven’t played around as much with vibe-coding tools as I would like, but I have access to all three of these.
Wispr Flow: an AI voice-dictation app that has helped me fix my bad habit of writing brief, lazy AI prompts. When I can just tap a button on my keyboard and start talking, I can give my AI assistants much deeper context and get better results on the first try.
Raycast: a super-launcher utility for macOS (and now Windows) that lets you open apps, search files, trigger system actions, and run custom commands from a keyboard-driven interface. Highly extensible with plugins for Linear, Notion, Google Workspace and much more. As a reformed banker, the ability to get stuff done on my computer without having to touch a mouse or trackpad is super critical to me, and Raycast makes that possible.
n8n: a developer‑friendly alternative to Zapier for workflow automation tool and AI orchestration
There are also offers for many other tools that I haven’t had a chance to try yet, and Lenny periodically adds to the list. Check out the full list here:
Basically, if you can afford it, both. But if you have to pick:
Choose Setapp if you want breadth on Mac: constant access to dozens of polished, Mac‑native apps across daily workflows. It’s the best “I need a tool for this right now” accelerator.
Choose Lenny’s Product Pass if you’ll benefit from the specific premium tools - and especially if you already value the newsletter and community.
But really, choose both.
Tips to maximise value
Start with tasks, not apps. In Setapp, search by what you’re trying to do and try two contenders before committing.
Time your Product Pass activations. Most codes grant a year from activation, so kick them off when you’re ready to adopt the tool.
Avoid overlap. If the pass gives you a year of a tool you’d otherwise pay for, pause that separate subscription while the pass runs.
Track renewals. Set a reminder 11 months out to review what stuck before auto‑renew dates hit. I built a Notion database (well, Notion AI built it for me) to track all my recurring subscriptions and auto-renewal dates.
My quick‑start setup for creators and operators
Core launcher and notes: Raycast for command‑palette everything. Granola for meetings. Linear for issues and projects. Paste for clipboard history, although Raycast does that too without the sync to iOS.
Content tooling: CleanShot X + FocuSee for screen capture and polished demos. Descript if you claim it in the pass.
Data and automation: TablePlus for DBs. n8n for developer‑grade workflows. GetAPI for quick API checks.
The bottom line
Between Setapp and Lenny’s Product Pass, you can assemble a best‑in‑class stack for a tiny fraction of what you’d otherwise pay. Use Setapp to cover daily needs, and claim the Product Pass to supercharge your team with flagship tools for a full year - then review what truly earned a permanent place in your workflow.
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