I’ve stuck to the “buy once, save later” rule for years. But I decided to challenge it and ran the math for five years for software I actually use, assuming today’s prices stay the same. I tracked what both options — one-time licenses and subscriptions — deliver or leave out.

The difference came down to three main elements: how often I used the apps, how many extras I needed, and how painful cancellation would be. I ultimately realized most advice omits that gap between the sticker price and the real cost.

Office wins the five-year math in under two years

But winning the math and winning the argument aren’t the same thing

Credit: Tashreef Shareef / MakeUseOf

It costs a single $179.99 payment to buy Office Home 2024, and the official list price for Microsoft 365 Personal is $99.99/year. If you go by the face value of these numbers, subscriptions become costlier than the one-time options in about 1.8 years. Over five years, Microsoft 365 Personal would cost $499.95 compared to Office Home 2024’s $179.99.

So in five years, you’re looking at a $320 difference. But that $320 difference also buys 1TB of OneDrive, use on multiple devices, ongoing updates, and Copilot access, features that the perpetual license doesn’t include. If you never move between laptops and tablets and don’t need cloud storage, these extras amount to nothing. If you do, they are tangible.

On the one-time purchase, there isn’t an upgrade path, so whenever there is another major release, you may have to buy the full product again. These updates/major releases are automatically rolled out to Microsoft 365 subscribers.

So, there are two metrics: a value proposition and the pure cash comparison. The one-time license wins the latter.

Photoshop has no one-time button to press

So five years stops being a purchase and starts being a bet

You can’t buy Photoshop outright. There’s a single-app plan: a 1-year contract priced at $22.99/month. This equals $275.88 a year. There’s also a Photography plan priced at $19.99/month, which includes Lightroom, Lightroom Classic, and 1TB of storage. If the price remains constant, five years of subscribing to the standalone plan equals $1,379.40.

Apart from the monthly fee, there is a second element to consider. You can be charged 50% of the remaining contract balance if you cancel an annual plan billed monthly after the first 14 days. An early termination fee makes what initially seems like a flexible subscription more of a commitment. Even if about $23 monthly feels reasonable, the question is: are you sure you wouldn’t need to stop after six or eight months?

Since there isn’t a one-time license option, a five-year comparison becomes a question of continuous access versus living without it during the stretches when you don’t need it.

Buying all six Apple apps costs more than subscribing to them

Unless you were only ever going to use one

Credit: Brady Snyder / MakeUseOf

Apple launched Apple Creator Studio in January 2026, and its current US price is $129/year. This package includes Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Motion, Compressor, and MainStage. Apple still sells these as individual apps, and their one-time prices total $679.94. On pure math, the subscription wins the five-year calculation at $645.

However, most folks don’t need all the tools in the bundle. If you’re only ever going to open Final Cut Pro, this comparison collapses to a one-time $299.99 payment versus $645 over five years. In this case, you’ll pay more than double and get five apps you won’t use.

It’s, however, important to pay extra attention to Final Cut Pro. Apple has continued updating the one-time-purchase version, which defies the idea that buying once automatically means being left behind. This history challenges the idea that a one-time license means falling permanently behind.

The bundle’s sticker value only makes sense if you would otherwise buy most of the included apps separately. There’s a difference between a retail total and a personal use case.

Here’s what changed the answer each time

From the table, there are three different outcomes. The perpetual Office buyer gets rewarded in raw dollars, Photoshop totally removes the ownership benefit, and the Creator Studio is a better deal than buying the full set individually, but it’s still more expensive than purchasing only the single app you actually need.

In all cases, you can definitely tell when the subscription has cost more in raw dollars: once its cumulative price passes the one-time license. That crossover doesn’t necessarily indicate when the subscription begins to deliver less value. More important than the five-year totals is what you need those five years for: are you paying for tools you use daily, buying ownership of a single app, or paying for flexible access to an evolving ecosystem?