Tusk is one of the newer entrants in Mac offload software, and it starts from a different premise than most of the field: the job isn't done when the card is empty. It watches your project folder and keeps syncing it — to other drives, and to the cloud — for as long as the project is open. ShotGrab stays narrower on purpose. Here's an honest look at what each one is actually built for.
Side by side
| ShotGrab | Tusk | |
|---|---|---|
| Platform | macOS 13+ only | macOS 12+ · Apple Silicon and Intel |
| Price | €5 pass (30 days) · €29/yr · €39 lifetime (launch price until 30 Nov 2026, then €69) | $79 one-time ($49 for the first 100 licenses) |
| Free tier | 128GB every 14 days, every feature unlocked | 14-day trial, full features, no card required — then a paywall |
| Verification | SHA-256 while copying (single read of the card) | BLAKE3, single read fanned out to every destination |
| Multiple cards at once | Parallel lanes — a second card from a different reader gets its own lane automatically | Not documented — one offload session at a time |
| Multiple destinations | Ordered cascade — verifies the primary, frees the card, then copies disk-to-disk to each secondary | Reads the card once, writes to every destination in parallel, including cloud |
| Cloud backup | None — local and network volumes only | Google Drive, Dropbox, S3-compatible (Backblaze B2, Wasabi, AWS S3) |
| After the ingest | Done — the project sits on disk until the next card | Keeps watching the project folder and syncing new files, re-exports, renamed clips |
| Organization | Automatic subfolders from a template, same one every card | Syncs a project folder as-is — no metadata-driven structure |
| Workflow | Arm a project once, every following card imports on its own | Pick destinations, run an offload per card |
Where Tusk wins
Tusk's scope is genuinely bigger, and for some workflows that matters more than anything in this list. It reads a card once and streams it to every destination at once — including cloud storage — so a wedding shooter who wants an off-site copy in Backblaze B2 alongside two local drives doesn't need a second tool for that. And its job doesn't stop at the card: once a project folder exists, Tusk keeps syncing whatever lands in it — re-exports, renamed clips, autosaved project files — for as long as the edit runs. ShotGrab has no equivalent to either of those. If the risk you're managing is "what happens to this project over the next three weeks," not just "what happens to this card in the next three minutes," Tusk is built for that question and ShotGrab isn't.
Where ShotGrab wins
ShotGrab is built around a narrower moment: a card goes in, and it should be handled without anyone touching the app. Arm a project once and every card that follows — from any reader, even a second one plugged in while the first is still copying — gets its own parallel lane and imports on its own. That matters most for a solo shooter or small crew moving through a long day, card after card, rather than someone configuring a sync target per session. It's also the cheaper way in: a €5 pass covers a single project outright, and the free tier is a real 128GB every two weeks with nothing crippled, not a countdown to a paywall like Tusk's 14-day trial. And because ShotGrab never talks to the cloud, there's nothing to explain to a client whose contract says footage stays local.
Who should pick which
Solo shooters and small crews who live on cards
Arm it once, plug in card after card, stay local, pay little — or nothing.
Anyone whose backup job outlives the card
Ongoing project sync, cloud redundancy alongside local drives, and comfortable paying $49-79 up front for it.