In July 2026 a UK production studio released Stow, a free copy-and-verify app for Mac and Windows. It does the same core job as ShotGrab: read a card once, write it to several drives and prove the copies match. Because it costs nothing, it deserves a fair comparison rather than a dismissal. Everything we say about Stow comes from its own website and one press write-up; we have not run it ourselves.
Side by side
| ShotGrab | Stow | |
|---|---|---|
| Platform | macOS 13+ | Apple Silicon Macs (no Intel build) and Windows |
| Price | Free up to 128GB every 14 days, every feature unlocked; €5 pass · €29/yr · €39 lifetime (launch price until 30 Nov 2026) | Free, no trial or account; the site says no paid tier is planned |
| Verification | SHA-256, computed on the source while copying | xxHash3-128; reads every file back from each destination, bypassing the cache |
| Destinations | Primary plus any number of secondaries, copied disk to disk after the card is freed | Two verified copies on separate drives are required for a "safe to format" verdict |
| Starting a copy | Arm a project once; each card that arrives starts by itself | You press Start copying; cards run one at a time by default |
| Organization | Folder template with date, camera, client and your own variables, applied on every import | Layouts built from date, client, shoot name, camera and custom names |
| Duplicates | Per-project dedup key (name, size, capture date, camera); the same shot is never copied twice | Re-adding a card copies only the files that are missing |
| Reports and manifests | None yet | ASC-MHL v2 manifest, checksums.csv and a one-page PDF-ready report |
| Marking a card for format | Optional and reversible, writes only to the first 2 MiB of the card | Optional "Wrap" marker, off by default |
Where Stow wins
It costs nothing, with no limit on how much you copy, and it runs on Windows. If you need an ASC-MHL manifest or a report to hand to a client with the drive, Stow produces both and ShotGrab does not yet. Its "safe to format" verdict, which requires two verified copies on two separate drives, is also a clear, hard-to-misread rule for a crew where several people touch the cards.
Where ShotGrab wins
The workflow. ShotGrab is built for the day when cards keep arriving: you pick a project once, and each card is recognized, copied, verified and ejected without anyone pressing Start. Stow asks you to start every copy and, by default, runs cards one after another. ShotGrab can also open a parallel lane when a second reader appears, so two cards read at the same time, and it deduplicates against the whole project, which matters when the same card comes back. SHA-256 is a cryptographic hash, where xxHash is fast but not; for catching accidental corruption both are adequate, so we would not call this a reason to choose one over the other.
Who should pick which
Mac shooters who want it automatic
Weddings, events and multi-camera days where cards arrive in a stream and you want a fixed folder template and no clicks per card.
Teams that need reports or Windows
Crews that must hand over an MHL manifest or a PDF report, mixed Mac and Windows machines, and anyone who wants a free tool with no cap.
What we couldn't confirm
Stow is new and its site changes quickly. We did not test its speed, its behaviour with damaged cards, or whether it supports hashes other than xxHash3-128. Before relying on either app for a job you can't redo, offload a spare card with it first and compare the files yourself.