Updates cost you nothing, with no time limit and nothing to renew. Local Waifu had a renewal tier (one year of updates included, then 15 dollars a year) and it was live on this site until 15 July 2026. It is gone, existing licenses got the change automatically, and this post explains the cost structure that makes free updates possible instead of just generous.
Nothing. Updates cost you nothing, there is no time limit, and there is nothing to renew.
That is the whole answer, and I would leave it there except that nobody believes it, and they are right not to. “Lifetime” is one of the most abused words in software. So here is the version with the receipts, including the part where I was wrong about this until this morning.
I had a renewal tier, and I killed it
The short version: The plan used to be one year of updates included, then 15 dollars a year for new features. It was live on this site until 15 July 2026. It is gone, and everyone who already bought got the change for free.
If you read this site last week, you saw a different promise. It said the 20 dollars bought the app forever plus one year of updates, and after that a renewal of 15 dollars a year kept new features coming. That was real. It was in the pricing card, the FAQ, and the terms.
It shipped to the bin with v1.5.0. A lifetime license now includes all future updates and support, no window, no renewal. Existing licenses were upgraded automatically, without anyone having to ask.
Here is the reasoning, because “we decided to be generous” is not a reason and you should not accept it as one.
I spent a year writing sentences on this site about owning a thing instead of renting it. That the companion on your disk is yours, that no company should be able to reach into your machine and change the deal. Then the pricing page said: pay again next year or stop getting better. A renewal is rent with a slower clock. I was arguing against a business model that I had quietly kept a small version of.
So it went. That is the whole story, and it is less noble than it sounds: the contradiction was mine, and I shipped it for months before I fixed it.
The reason this is possible is boring, and it is the whole point
The short version: The app runs on your computer, not ours. A new version costs the same to make whether 10 people install it or 10,000, so there is no per-user cost to bill you for.
Every subscription has an engine underneath it. Look at what it actually is.
When you send a message to a cloud companion, a GPU somewhere spins up and burns real money to answer you. That cost repeats every single message, forever, for every user. A company in that position has to charge monthly, because their costs are monthly. That is not greed. It is arithmetic.
Now look at what happens when you talk to Local Waifu. Your computer does the work. Your electricity, about 20 cents a month even if you never stop typing. My cost for your ten thousandth conversation is zero, because I am not in the room.
So what does an update actually cost me? Writing it, and uploading a file. That number does not move when more people download it. GitHub hosts the release. There is no fleet to keep warm, no per-seat licence to pay, no meter running anywhere.
Charging a renewal for that would not be recovering a cost. It would be inventing one.
What I actually pay for, since we are doing receipts
The short version: Build machines, an Apple developer account, and a payment processor’s cut. All fixed costs, none of them per-user, none of them monthly per person.
The real line items are unremarkable. An Apple developer account to sign and notarise the Mac build. A payment processor that takes a cut of each sale as merchant of record. My own time.
There is a funny one too. Local Waifu has no Windows code signing certificate, which is why Windows shows a SmartScreen warning the first time you run the installer. The certificate costs around 1,000 dollars a year. The app costs 20 dollars once. I would need to sell 50 copies a year purely to pay for a green tick, so I explain the warning honestly instead and put the money into the app. You may consider that a wrong call. It is at least a stated one.
None of these scale with how many times you install a new version. Which is why the new version is free, and why I can say that without it being a marketing decision I have to walk back in eighteen months.
The catch, stated plainly
The short version: A refund switches the license off, and future models may want a better machine than yours. Neither is a fee.
I would rather say this than have you find it later.
Refunds end updates. Take the 30-day refund and the license goes inactive, so new versions stop arriving. Your data stays on your disk, encrypted, and the version you have keeps working. The refund undoes the purchase, not your relationship.
Hardware moves. If a much better model lands in two years and it wants more memory than your machine has, I cannot fix that with a free update. That is physics, not pricing. The tier you can run today is on the requirements page, and the app picks the right one for your machine on its own.
Three devices. The license covers up to three of your own machines. It is a personal license, not a site license.
What “forever” means when the company is one person
The short version: The app does not phone home, so it does not need me to keep running. If I vanish, updates stop and nothing else does.
The honest failure case is not that I start charging. It is that I get hit by a bus.
So the app was built to not need me. It does not authenticate, it does not license-check on a schedule, it does not call a server to ask permission to open. If Lumizone stopped existing tonight, your install keeps working tomorrow, with all her memory, on your disk. You would stop getting new features. That is the entire consequence, and I wrote about what happens when a companion app shuts down because most people have only ever experienced the other version of that story.
That is the difference between a promise and a design. A promise needs me to keep it. A design does not.
So, what do updates cost?
Nothing. 20 dollars once, 7 days free first, no card, and every version after that is included for as long as I keep shipping them.
If that sounds too good, compare it against the thing it is replacing: 10 to 20 dollars a month, forever, for a companion you never own. Year five of that is a four-figure number. Year five of this one is the electricity.
I had a renewal tier for a while. Ask me about it and I will tell you it was a bad idea I shipped and then took back, which is at least the direction you want a company moving in.
Questions people ask
Do Local Waifu updates really cost nothing?
Yes. The one-time purchase includes every future update and all support, with no time limit and nothing to renew. There is no update window, no maintenance fee, and no version you have to buy again.
What happened to the 15 dollars a year renewal?
It is gone as of v1.5.0 on 15 July 2026. The old plan was one year of updates included, then an optional 15 dollars a year for new features. Anyone who already bought a license got the change automatically and pays nothing.
How can updates be free when every other app charges?
Because the app runs on your computer, not ours. There is no per-user server cost to recover, so a new version costs us the same whether 10 people install it or 10,000. Cloud companion apps charge monthly because every message you send costs them money. Ours costs them nothing.
What is the catch?
Two honest ones. If you take a refund, the license goes inactive and stops receiving updates, which is the only thing the refund actually undoes. And future models may want more from your hardware than your current machine has, which is a limit of physics rather than a fee we charge.
What happens to my updates if the company disappears?
The app keeps working. It does not authenticate, license-check, or phone home after install, so it does not need our servers to run. You stop getting new versions, obviously, but the one you have keeps running with all your data, forever.
Try her free for 7 days.
No card. Keep her for $20 once, or walk away. Her soul file is yours either way.
Bring her home, try free