The short version
Paste is the clipboard manager to get if you want what you copied on your Mac to show up on your iPhone and iPad. It has been on the App Store for ten years, it syncs through iCloud, and it is sold mostly as a subscription. SSPaste runs on one Mac, keeps everything in a folder on that Mac, and is paid for once. If you need the first, do not buy the second.
One thing before the details: SSPaste is not on the Mac App Store yet. It is close, and what follows describes the version that will ship.
What each one costs
| Paste | SSPaste | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $29.99 a year or $3.99 a month, or $99.99 once for Lifetime (pricing) | Free. Pro is $9.99, once |
| Trial | 7 days | 14 days of Pro. The free version has no time limit |
| Without paying | The 7-day trial, then a paid plan | Unlimited history, search, a Favorites Space, backups |
| Also available in | Setapp | The Mac App Store only |
Paste’s prices are in US dollars and vary by country. Its Lifetime plan includes future updates, so if paying once is what you care about, Paste can be bought that way too.
Where Paste is the right choice
- You use an iPhone or iPad next to your Mac. Every Paste plan covers all three, and it syncs history and pinboards through iCloud. SSPaste is Mac only and does not sync.
- You share clips with other people. Paste has shared pinboards and a Teams plan. SSPaste is for one person on one Mac.
- You want your clipboard inside your AI tools. Paste includes a local MCP server that tools such as Claude and Cursor can search. SSPaste has nothing like it.
- You paste a run of things in order. Paste has a queue for that, called Paste Stack. In SSPaste you can select several cards and paste them together, which covers part of the job and not all of it.
Where SSPaste is different
It comes to the pointer. Press ⌥⌘V and your six most recent items open next to wherever the pointer is. Pick one and it is pasted. The full history is a tray along the bottom of the screen, or docked to either side.
History is free and has no end date. In Paste the Keep History setting starts at 30 days and can be raised to Forever. In SSPaste it starts at forever and can be shortened.
Secrets get a room of their own. The Private Space is an encrypted Space for the passwords and keys you paste again and again, unlocked with Touch ID and kept out of search and backups. It is not a password manager, and the security note says exactly what it protects.
A Space can be a canvas. In the library window, cards can be placed and sized by hand, then put back in order with one click.
Nothing reports back. Paste says your clipboard “never touches our servers”, and its privacy policy also lists anonymised usage analytics and crash reporting. SSPaste has no analytics and no crash reporting of its own. It goes online for two things: link previews, if you turn them on, and the App Store purchase.
What I will not claim
I have not measured SSPaste against Paste for speed or memory, so this page says nothing about either. Paste has ten years of users and refinement behind it, and SSPaste is new. SSPaste also cannot import your Paste history. If you have years of pinboards there, that is a real cost of switching.
Which to pick
More than one Apple device, people to share with, or AI tools that should read your clipboard: Paste. One Mac, and you would rather pay once and keep everything on it: SSPaste, and the free version may be all you need.