I built the free plan to be useful on its own, not a trial that nags you to upgrade. If you have one pet and a manageable amount of paperwork, Free might be all you ever need. Here is the honest line between the two.
What you get on Free
Free covers one pet, with no card required to start. You get five lifetime vault uploads, a couple of Smart Scans for regular health documents and a couple more for rabies certificates, and the Smart Wizard review so nothing is saved until you say so. You can add records by hand anytime, see and search everything in the app, and email reports to your own inbox. Free emails do not include the original file attachments, but they can carry your contact info when you forward them.
In plain terms, Free is for getting one pet organized and seeing whether a digital vault fits your routine.
What Plus adds
Plus is built for multi-pet households and people with a lot of paperwork. It raises the limit to ten pets and gives you plenty of vault uploads and plenty of Smart Scans, so you are not counting them. It adds reminders for shots and medications, the Vault Card for keeping rabies and key records one tap away, and full sharing: email any pet's complete record to yourself, a vet, groomer, boarding facility, or caregiver, with the original files attached or available to download. You can save vet, groomer, boarding, and caregiver contacts, include your contact info so recipients can verify the request, and send records directly to anyone.
What it costs
Plus is 4.99 dollars a month. If you go yearly, it works out to about 4.17 dollars a month, billed as 49.99 dollars once a year, which is roughly two months free. You can cancel anytime, and the yearly plan locks in today's price.
A simple way to choose
Pick Free if you have one pet, light paperwork, and mostly want a tidy, searchable place for records you email to yourself. Pick Plus if you have more than one pet, ongoing medications, frequent boarding or grooming, or you regularly need to send records to other people. Most households that upgrade do it for the pet limit and the sharing, not the scan count.
Either way, you start in the same place: add your first pet and upload a record. You can move up to Plus whenever your routine asks for it, not before.