Capture One Raised Prices 344%. They Think You'll Just Pay It.

Let me walk you through a timeline. It's not pretty.

The timeline of a betrayal

November 2022: Capture One runs a 50% off sale on perpetual licenses. Photographers stock up. Good deal, right?

December 2022: Weeks later, they announce perpetual licenses will no longer include feature updates. The 50% off sale was clearance. They just didn't tell you.

2023: Brand-specific perpetual licenses jump from $129 to $199. That's a 54% increase for the cheapest option — the one that only works with one camera brand.

January 2024: Private equity firm Axcel takes majority ownership. Layoffs begin. The communications team gets gutted. Twice. The free Express tier is killed. The community forum? Gone.

May 2024: Multi-user studio plans go from $1,598 to $5,500 for 10 seats. That's a 344% increase. Studios that had been paying $160/seat are now paying $550/seat. For the same software.

March 2025: Another 6% across the board. Just because they can.

A DPReview user mapped the strategy perfectly:

Step 1: Announce subscription, keep perpetual. Step 2: Force perpetual users to subscription. Step 3: Remove perpetual. Step 4: Increase price. We're at step 4.

The math that should make you sick

Let's say you're a solo photographer who started using Capture One in 2020. Here's what you've paid:

If you run a 5-person studio? Multiply that by 5. You're looking at over $7,000 and counting for tethering software.

What are you actually paying for?

Here's the honest breakdown of what Capture One does that you actually use on a tethered shoot:

• Connect camera to computer
• Display images as they're captured
• Rate and organize images
• Basic adjustments (most photographers edit in Photoshop/Lightroom anyway)

That's it. The color grading tools are excellent — I'll give them that. The layer-based editing is legitimately good. But if you're like most tethered shooters, you capture in Capture One and edit somewhere else. You're paying $229/year for a capture app with features you don't use.

What to do about it

I'm not going to pretend to be objective here. I built TETHER STUDIO specifically because this pricing is insane. But let me give you the honest landscape:

If you need Capture One's RAW editing and color grading: There's no perfect replacement. DxO PhotoLab comes closest for color science. Affinity Photo (now free) handles layers. Neither has Capture One's tethering integration.

If you need tethering and edit elsewhere: That's where TETHER STUDIO lives. $99 once. Every feature. Tethering, AI culling, art director markup, client view, pro export. You keep your existing editing app — Lightroom, Photoshop, Affinity, whatever. You just stop paying Capture One's tethering tax.

If you're starting out: Please don't start with a $229/year subscription. Just don't. Put that money toward a better lens. Get a tethering app that costs less than a single portrait session, learn your craft, and upgrade later if you genuinely need what Capture One offers.

The part they don't want you to think about

Capture One's pricing strategy works because of inertia. You've learned the shortcuts. Your presets are there. Your sessions are organized in their format. Switching feels like moving apartments — technically possible, emotionally exhausting.

But here's the thing about paying rent: it never stops. Capture One will never email you and say "thanks for your loyalty, it's free now." The price will keep going up. The features you don't use will keep multiplying. And every January, that renewal email will arrive like clockwork.

Or you pay $99 once. And it's done. And every January, you don't think about software licensing at all. You think about shooting.

Your call. But the math is the math.