TeenyClip vs Maccy vs Paste vs Pastebot

I ship teenyclip. The reasonable assumption is that this comparison is going to land where I want it to land. I will try to be even-handed about the others, but you should read it with that bias in mind.

The four apps in this writeup are real alternatives in 2026. The thirty other clipboard managers in the App Store are mostly reskins of an open-source library, abandoned, or both. These four are actively maintained, ship native binaries, and have credible developer reputations behind them. Picking among them is the part of the decision that actually matters.

The short version

• Want free and good? Maccy.
• Want polished paid with a one-time price? teenyclip at $4.99.
• Want maximum capability and willing to learn? Pastebot at $19.99 once.
• Want clipboard sync across iPhone and Mac? Paste at $14.99 a year.

Side by side

Maccy

Open source by Alex Rodionov. Free, MIT licensed, on Homebrew, on the Mac App Store. Maintained continuously since 2019. Native Swift, around 25MB of RAM idle.

Maccy is intentionally minimal. The author has been clear that he wants to keep it that way. Search and paste, favorites in the same list as history, basic exclusions by app pattern. No image preview thumbnails worth speaking of, no snippet pinning with their own shortcuts, no cross-device sync.

For most casual clipboard users, Maccy is the right answer. The reason to look at the paid alternatives is something specific Maccy does not do, not a generic sense that paid must be better. If you have not figured out which feature you need yet, install Maccy first.

Pick if: you want free, open source, well-maintained, and a small surface area is a feature for you.

TeenyClip

Mine. Native Swift, $4.99 lifetime, 3-day free trial. Macs only, single device, no cloud.

The shape is Maccy plus a few specific things. Image previews in the popup, full size, not just thumbnails. Pinned clips have their own keyboard shortcuts (⌘1 through ⌘9), so the snippets you use every day live separately from your rolling history. Hex color detection: copy #FF6B35 or rgb(255, 107, 53) and the popup shows a color swatch. Sensitive app exclusion ships with a default list (1Password, Bitwarden, common banking apps) and a 2-second grace period after you switch out of one of them, so a copy you started inside 1Password gets ignored even if you switch apps before pasting.

What it does not do: cross-device sync. The data is local. If you switch between a desktop and a laptop, you reconfigure the hotkey and your pinned clips on each one. That is the right tradeoff for a single-purpose, single-device, $4.99 utility.

Pick if: you want Maccy's general shape with image previews, pinned shortcuts, and an automatic exclusion model, and you do not need iPhone clipboard sync.

Paste

Paste, by Wallflower Tools. Subscription, $14.99 a year or $2.49 a month. Mac, iPhone, iPad apps that share clipboard history through iCloud.

The UI is the most polished in the category. Big image previews, code syntax highlighting, snippet collections that you can organize into named groups (work snippets, personal snippets, etc.). Cross-device sync is the core feature; if you copy something on iPhone, it shows up in Paste on your Mac within a few seconds.

The catch is the recurring price. The argument against subscription clipboard managers is fairly specific: a clipboard manager is a tool that runs locally and does not have ongoing infrastructure costs that scale with usage. Subscription pricing for it is a business model choice, not a server-cost requirement. If you accept that and value the polish and sync, Paste is excellent. If you do not, Pastebot covers most of the same use cases for a one-time fee.

Pick if: cross-device clipboard sync between Mac and iOS is the killer feature for you, and the subscription model does not bother you.

Pastebot

Pastebot, by Tapbots. $19.99 once, native Mac, with an iOS companion app sold separately. Tapbots are the team that made Tweetbot, which gives them a reputation for build quality that the indie Mac category recognizes immediately.

The deepest tool in the category. Filters that transform clipboard content (strip formatting, lowercase, base64 encode, find-and-replace), pasteboard sequences (paste a sequence of items in order), per-app rules. There is a learning curve. Once you climb it, you can chain transforms in ways the other apps cannot do at all.

iCloud sync is included between Pastebot Mac and Pastebot iOS, but only between Pastebot apps. So you get cross-device sync without the subscription cost, at the price of buying both apps.

Pick if: you are a developer or power user who will actually use the filters and sequences. If you would not use them, Pastebot is overkill compared to teenyclip at a quarter of the price.

The decision in two questions

Most cases resolve cleanly with two questions.

First: do you need iPhone-to-Mac clipboard sync, beyond what Apple's built-in Universal Clipboard already does? If yes, Paste or Pastebot. Universal Clipboard syncs your most recent copy across devices, but it is still one item deep, so multi-item history sync is the gap. If you do not need that, single-device options open up.

Second: free or paid? If free is non-negotiable, Maccy is the answer and Maccy is good. If you are willing to pay for the polish and you do not need sync, teenyclip at $4.99 is the lighter option and Pastebot at $19.99 is the deeper option. If you are not sure which depth you want, start at teenyclip and step up to Pastebot only if you find yourself wanting the filters or sequences specifically.

What I would say to a Maccy user thinking about switching

Maccy is genuinely good. If you have it, the case for switching is specific. Three patterns that show up in support emails I get from teenyclip customers who came over from Maccy:

You keep wanting to glance at an image you copied earlier and Maccy's tiny thumbnail is not enough to tell which one is which. The full-size image preview in teenyclip is the entire reason this comes up.

You have a few snippets you paste constantly (your address, an email signature, code boilerplate) and you want them at ⌘1 through ⌘9 rather than mixed in with the rolling history. Maccy's favorites system shares a list with everything else, which means you have to search past your recent copies to find a pinned snippet.

You want the manager to automatically pause when 1Password or your bank app is in the foreground, without having to remember to set up exclusion rules manually. teenyclip ships this as a default and adds the 2-second grace period.

If that privacy behavior is your main reason to switch, read the clipboard manager privacy guide before comparing feature lists. The right choice depends on what you copy, not which app has the longest checklist.

If none of those describe you, stay on Maccy. Free Mac software exists for a reason and Maccy is exactly the kind of thing that reason produces.