Introducing SyncUp Plus and the Supporter Tier
Since day one SyncUp has been free and served from a cheap home server. That works well if you live near me, but it gets slow if you are on the other side of the world, and paying for real infrastructure out of pocket is not something I can keep doing as more people show up. Today I am launching SyncUp Plus, a small subscription that funds hosting, a CDN, and servers in more regions. There is also a one-time Supporter tier for people who want to chip in without subscribing.
Why I Added a Paid Tier
The honest version: SyncUp grew past what a single home server and my wallet can handle. Watch parties with people in Europe, Asia, and Australia all routing through my apartment adds up to noticeable lag and buffering, and the bill for doing it properly, with regional servers and a CDN, is more than I can absorb personally.
I could have slapped ads on the site or started charging for core features. I did not want to do either. Ads would change the feel of the product, and locking basic sync behind a paywall would defeat the point of building something accessible. Plus is the compromise: the core stays free, and people who want higher limits or extra features help fund the infrastructure that is needed for those features to work.
What Stays Free, Forever
Before I get into what Plus adds, the more important list is what nobody has to pay for:
- Core sync, chat, reactions, playlist voting. The reason SyncUp exists. Not going behind a paywall.
- Friends and direct messages. Free tier gets the full social layer.
- YouTube, Twitch, Kick, and standard video playback. All the built-in sources still work without an account upgrade.
- Voice chat up to 1 hour per day. Enough for most sessions. Resets at UTC midnight.
- Rooms up to 5 people. Plenty for a movie night with close friends or a couple watching long distance.
If you only ever use the free tier, nothing about your experience should get worse. Actually, better infrastructure funded by Plus means sync should feel tighter for people far from my home server too.
What Plus Includes
Plus is $3.99 per month or $39.99 per year (about two months off if you go yearly), with a 7-day free trial. Here is what it adds:
Rooms up to 50 people
Jumps from 5 to 50. The nice part: if any one person in a room has Plus, the cap applies to the whole room. Your friends do not all need to upgrade.
Unlimited voice chat in HD
No 1-hour cap, and the audio quality is bumped up. Useful for long movie nights or study sessions.
Unlimited external extractions
Free tier gets 50 yt-dlp extractions per day. Plus removes the cap, which matters if you play a lot of videos from sites outside the built-in sources.
Custom room branding
Set colours and a background for your room. Small thing, but nice if you host the same group regularly.
Room passwords and analytics
Password-protect rooms for private sessions, and get an analytics tab showing viewership and activity over time.
GIFs, 1 GB+ uploads, forever history
Send GIFs in chat, go beyond the 1 GB direct file upload limit, and keep room history and the rooms themselves past the 30-day inactivity cutoff.
The full feature list is on the Plus page if you want to compare side by side.
The One-Plus-User Room Rule
This one is worth calling out. The 50-person room cap applies if any member of the room has Plus, not just the owner. So if you have Plus and invite 30 friends, all 30 get in even though none of them are paying. I built it this way on purpose. Watch parties are a group activity, and making every person pay to join a bigger room would be annoying and kind of miss the point.
The Supporter Tier
Not everyone wants a subscription, and I get that. For people who want to help out once and be done with it, there is a Supporter tier: a one-time $9 payment that gets you a permanent supporter badge and a coloured username in chat.
To be clear about what it is not: Supporter does not unlock Plus features. It is cosmetic. Think of it as tipping the dev, with a visible thank-you in return. If you want feature unlocks, Plus is the option. Full details are on the support page.
If You Have an Existing Big Room
Rooms that already had more than 5 members when Plus launched get a 7-day grace period before the new cap applies. You will see a banner in-room during that window. That gives you time to either trim down, upgrade one member to Plus, or pick another plan for your group, without suddenly kicking people mid-session.
What This Does Not Change
A few things worth being explicit about:
- No accounts required to watch. You can still create and join rooms without signing up. Plus needs an account because billing needs one, but the free experience stays the same.
- No ads. Not now, not planned.
- Still one developer. I am still the only person building SyncUp. Plus helps pay for infrastructure, not a team.
The Short Version
SyncUp stays free for the things that made it useful in the first place. Plus is for people who want bigger rooms, unlimited voice, custom branding, or just want to help fund better infrastructure. Supporter is a one-time option if a subscription is not your thing. Either way, it keeps the project going.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. Core sync, chat, playlist voting, reactions, friends, DMs, and watching YouTube, Twitch, Kick, or standard videos stay free forever. Rooms up to 5 people and 1 hour of voice chat per day are also free. Plus raises limits and adds extras, it does not lock core features behind a paywall.
$3.99 per month or $39.99 per year (about two months free). There is a 7-day free trial. Billing runs through Polar as the merchant of record.
No. If any member of a room has an active Plus subscription, the 50-user cap applies to the whole room. One Plus user lifts the limit for everyone in that room.
A one-time $9 payment. You get a permanent supporter badge and a coloured username. It is purely cosmetic, there are no feature unlocks. It exists for people who want to chip in once without committing to a subscription.
Rooms created before launch that exceed the free cap get a 7-day grace period. You will see a banner inside the room during that window so you can decide how to handle it before the cap applies.
You keep access until the end of the period you already paid for. After that, your account returns to the free tier. Your rooms and history are not deleted, but free-tier limits apply again.
Try Plus or Keep It Free
Plus has a 7-day free trial if you want to try the bigger rooms and HD voice without committing. Or keep using SyncUp on the free tier, that is genuinely fine with me.
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