How FriendsWithTools pays its bills
The short version: paid plans, occasional ads on free accounts, and donations. We don't sell your data, we don't take a cut of borrows, and we don't show ads to paid subscribers.
1. Paid plans
Most of our revenue comes from paid subscriptions. The free tier covers what most groups need — borrowing, lending, messaging, reminders. Larger or more active groups can upgrade for things like calendar sync, maintenance tracking, advanced reservations, and priority support. See the pricing page for what's in each tier.
Pricing is per-account, not per-borrow. We never take a percentage of anything that gets lent or borrowed within a group — sharing between members is always free.
2. Advertising on free accounts
Free accounts may see a small number of ads served by our advertising partners (currently Google AdSense / Ad Manager). Ads appear in limited slots on marketing pages and inside the free-tier app experience. Paid subscribers see no ads, ever.
We choose ad placement carefully — no interstitials, no auto-play video, no notification spam. The goal is to keep the free tier sustainable without making it annoying to use.
What we don't do with advertising:
- We don't sell or share your personal data with advertisers. Ads are served based on the page you're on, not your individual profile.
- We don't track you across the web for retargeting beyond what standard analytics pixels collect (Meta Pixel, Reddit Pixel — for our own paid acquisition campaigns; you can opt out via the cookie banner).
- We don't show ads inside borrow flows or messaging threads.
3. Donations
FriendsWithTools is built with a small team and a leaner-than-most budget. If you find the app useful and want to support it independently of paying for a plan, you can chip in directly. Donations help us keep the free tier free, ship features faster, and spend less time chasing ad revenue.
Donation links coming soon — we're setting up Ko-fi and a few other options. If you'd like to help out in the meantime, the best thing you can do is upgrade to a paid plan or tell a neighbor about the app.
What we don't make money from
- Selling user data. We don't sell it, don't share it, don't profile users for outside advertisers. See our privacy policy for the full statement.
- Taking a cut of borrows. When members in a group lend and borrow, no money changes hands through us. Whatever arrangements members make between themselves are entirely their own.
- Listing fees, transaction fees, deposits, or insurance add-ons. None of those exist on this platform.