Pro vs Free

Submarius has a free tier and a paid Pro tier. The line between them is drawn deliberately: safety features are free regardless of payment; forecast depth and intelligence layers are Pro.

Free, forever

These features are available to every user, with no time limit and no “upgrade to continue” prompts:

• SOS with Plus Code rescue location
• Dive-buddy GPS sharing
• OCEARCH tagged-shark proximity alerts
• Crowd-sourced shark sightings
• Tide predictions for any coastal location
• Sun and moon times
• The current marine forecast (today and tomorrow)
• Today’s water-clarity estimate (with band)
• Today’s GO/NO verdict
• Spot library (private, buddy-shared, or public-fuzzed) with end-to-end encrypted backup
• Catch logging
• Offline base map (bathymetry + structure)
• Reefs and wrecks overlay

In other words: the safety net, the basic forecast, your personal data, and offline operation. The free tier is a complete usable product, not a teaser.

Pro

Pricing: $12.99/month, $99/year, or $149 lifetime (current prices; check the app for live values).

What you get on top of Free:

• 7-day forecast (vs today and tomorrow)
• Hourly granularity for the full window
• Water-clarity forecast for the full 7-day horizon, including best-window detection (“best dive window this week: Saturday 9 AM– noon, ~12 m visibility”)
• Bite-score forecast for the full horizon, per-species
• Animated precipitation radar overlay
• Sea-surface temperature overlay with thermocline detection
• Wind-particle map
• HRRR short-range wind raster
• Multi-spot trip planner
• Push notifications for verdict changes at saved spots
• Higher upload quota for catch and viz reports

Pro is the unit-economics-positive subscription that funds the data ingest pipelines (CoastWatch, GOES-16 ABI, USGS, OCEARCH, etc.) and the ongoing work on the model. The free tier is genuinely free, not loss-led — its scope is sized to be servable with the Pro revenue.

Why this split

Three commitments, in order of priority:

1. Safety features must reach everyone. A locked SOS button is wrong, full stop. Same for buddy-GPS and shark proximity.
2. Today’s reality should be visible to everyone. If conditions are dangerous right now, you shouldn’t need a subscription to see that. Today’s verdict is free.
3. Forecast depth, time horizon, and intelligence layers are Pro. The 7-day clarity forecast is the active product — what spearos pay for, what justifies the subscription. The free tier doesn’t include it.

The split holds even when it costs us conversion. We’ve been asked to gate buddy-GPS or to limit SOS to one trigger per month. We won’t.

Lifetime tier

The $149 lifetime option exists for users who’d rather pay once than think about a recurring bill. It’s a real lifetime — you keep Pro for as long as Submarius runs, with no future upsell. We may raise the lifetime price for new buyers as the product grows; existing lifetime users are grandfathered.

Cancellation

Subscriptions are managed through the Apple App Store. Cancel anytime in Settings → Apple ID → Subscriptions. There’s no in-app dark pattern to make cancellation hard.