Ask these before comparing prices
- Do you need Windows support, or is your whole set on Mac?
- Does a client or studio require ASC MHL manifests or branded delivery reports?
- How many cards a day, and how much of that time do you want to spend configuring the tool versus shooting?
- Is fast culling and captioning your main job, with copying secondary?
The options, side by side
| Price | Free tier | Best for | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finder | Free | Unlimited, but no verification | Small, low-stakes transfers with time to double-check |
| ShotGrab | €5 pass (30 days) · €29/yr · €39 lifetime | 128GB / 14 days, full features | Solo shooters and small crews on Mac who want it automatic |
| OffShoot | $169–$249, or $49/30 days | 10-day full trial | DIT teams needing ASC MHL and branded reports |
| ShotPut Pro | $169 perpetual | Limited trial | Cross-platform sets with complex renaming needs |
| Photo Mechanic | Subscription or perpetual license | Trial | Fast culling, captioning and IPTC tagging first, copying second |
Why the free tier's fine print matters more than the sticker price
A "free" tool that's really a 10-day trial isn't a free tier — it's a countdown to a purchase decision. A free tier worth comparing has no expiration on the software itself, even if it caps volume (ShotGrab's cap, for example, is 128GB every 14 days, with nothing else disabled). That's the difference between "try it" and "actually use it on real work before paying."
Honest recommendations
If your set runs Windows machines or has to deliver ASC MHL-sealed media, OffShoot or ShotPut Pro are the safer defaults — that's genuinely their strength, not ours. If your main job is culling thousands of images fast and tagging them, Photo Mechanic's ingest is a reasonable stop on the way to its real strength, which is everything that happens after the copy. If you're a solo shooter or a small crew on a Mac who wants to set a destination once and keep working while cards keep arriving — without configuring a preset each session or paying a few hundred dollars up front — that's the specific gap ShotGrab fills. And if it's a handful of low-stakes files with time to double-check manually, Finder remains genuinely fine.