Price terms as published
Each line is the vendor’s own wording, split from the price capture checked on 2026-10-23. Nothing here is rounded, converted or re-worded — the full sentences stay in the review below. Lines that carry only a price continue the plan named on the line above, in the vendor’s own order.
| # | Plan / term | Checked |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Free 20 min/day | 2026-10-23 |
| 2 | Subscription $7/mo (billed $84/yr) | 2026-10-23 |
| 3 | Lifetime $199 | 2026-10-23 |
| 4 | Team $67.20 per seat per year (12-seat $806.40/yr) | 2026-10-23 |
One-liner: Beam is a macOS app that puts the windows of another Mac onto the Mac in front of you — each remote window arrives as a native window with its own Dock icon and Cmd-Tab slot, encrypted directly between the two machines. It launched on Product Hunt on October 19–20, 2026 and is aimed at the headless Mac mini or Mac Studio that runs Claude Code, Codex, or other agents while you sit somewhere else. Everything below was checked against beam.win’s homepage and pricing page on 2026-10-23, cross-checked with the Product Hunt launch page and two launch-tracker write-ups.
Verified facts (checked 2026-10-23)
| Attribute | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | $0 forever: host as many Macs as you like, join any share link, and get 20 minutes a day of everything on the Mac you sit at — no card | Official beam.win pricing page, fetched 2026-10-23 |
| Subscription | $7/month billed $84 a year (“best value”): unlimited use on every Mac you own, send share links to anyone | Official beam.win pricing page |
| Lifetime | $199 once: everything in Subscription plus every future update | Official beam.win pricing page |
| Team | $67.20 per seat per year with every seat 20% off from 10 (a team of 12 = $806.40/yr); the Macs they reach are free | Official beam.win pricing page |
| Cancellation | “Cancel anytime” from the account page; plans run to the end of the paid period, then back to Free | Official beam.win pricing FAQ |
| Plan switch | Move from Monthly or Yearly to Lifetime within three months and what you paid counts toward it | Official beam.win pricing FAQ |
| Window model | A window on one Mac opens on the other as a real native window — resizable, typeable, with Dock icon and Cmd-Tab presence; not a video feed | Official beam.win homepage |
| Privacy | “Windows go straight from Mac to Mac, encrypted. We never see them.” Direct connections, no relay through Beam servers | Official beam.win homepage |
| File transfer | Drag a file onto a beamed window or copy-paste; it lands on the other Mac; audio can play on the local Mac | Official beam.win homepage |
| Whole screens | Grab a single window, an entire display, or several windows at once (build from the Studio, logs from the mini, side by side) | Official beam.win homepage |
| Connectivity | Same Wi-Fi is enough; add Tailscale to use a Mac in another city | Official beam.win homepage |
| Guest access | No app on that device? Windows open in a browser tab too; share links open one window, guest pointer included | Official beam.win pricing page + The New Stack interview |
| Requirements | Apple silicon, macOS Sonoma or later on both machines | daily.dev and The New Stack coverage, cross-checked with PH launch page |
| Maker | Noats Inc, built by Hiten Shah (Crazy Egg, KISSmetrics) and Sam Asante | The New Stack + Product Hunt launch page |
| Launch | Product Hunt October 19–20, 2026 (daily winner with 356 upvotes on day one per NODUS tracker); iOS and Android apps announced “on the way” | NODUS daily leaderboard + The New Stack |
This is an official-terms entry: we have not run two Beam-equipped Macs ourselves, so there is no score.
Getting it running
Beam is a two-Mac story. Install Beam on both machines — the mini or Studio that runs the agents, and the Mac you actually sit at. Both need Apple silicon and macOS Sonoma or later. The machines find each other automatically on the same Wi-Fi network; for remote setups, both sides also run Tailscale and Beam connects through it.
To use it: pick a window on the other Mac from Beam’s picker and it opens on your desktop as its own native window. Type into it, resize it, drag files onto it, hear its audio — the app keeps running on the original machine. A single window is the default; you can also beam an entire screen or several windows at once. If the device in front of you has no Beam app, a share link from the host opens the window in a browser tab, view-only unless you grant control. Hidden windows and password managers do not show up in the window picker, per the makers’ privacy post.
What it costs
The pricing model is deliberately unusual: the Macs you connect to are always free. Hosting any number of Macs costs nothing; you pay only for the seat you sit at.
- Free: 20 minutes a day of everything on your Mac, no card, minutes reset each day. Free is also the trial — there is no separate free-trial period.
- Subscription: $7/month, billed $84 a year — unlimited use on every Mac you own and share links for anyone. Monthly and yearly start the day you buy them.
- Lifetime: $199 once, covers every future update; switch from monthly/yearly within three months and what you paid counts toward it.
- Team: $67.20 per seat per year at 12 seats (the published example), with 20% off each seat from 10 seats up.
Note: some launch-day coverage (daily.dev, The New Stack) quoted “$12 a month, $84 a year.” The official pricing page we fetched shows the subscription card at $7/month, billed $84 a year — the yearly figure matches across all sources, so the discrepancy is in the monthly-interval wording, not the annual price. This page follows the official card.
How it differs from alternatives
Beam is not another screen-sharing app, and the comparison matters for what you pay. Traditional remote-desktop tools (Parsec, RustDesk, the built-in Screen Sharing) hand you a picture of a desktop — one streamed rectangle, usually with a framerate compromise. Beam hands you the window itself: each remote app window becomes a native window with its own Dock icon, Cmd-Tab entry, and resize behavior, streamed at the display’s exact resolution so text stays crisp. That distinction is exactly what the headless-agent workflow needs: you want the Terminal session on the mini and the browser on the mini to feel like local apps while the agents keep running unattended.
On price, Beam is cheap for its niche. Per-window remote access tools aimed at the agent crowd (Lapce-style cloud dev boxes, VNC wrappers) rarely publish a $7/month flat seat; lifetime pricing at $199 is closer to an indie utility than an enterprise remote-access suite. The trade-offs are real: Mac-only (no Windows/Linux client today), Apple silicon and Sonoma+ on both ends, and the free tier’s 20-minute daily cap is the actual decision point — a heavy agent-watcher will outgrow Free almost immediately, while someone who just checks the mini three times a day may never pay. iOS and Android clients were announced as “on the way” but are not shipped yet, so there is no phone-based access today.
Where to stay honest
- “Encrypted, we never see them” is the maker’s architecture claim, not an audited guarantee; the company says windows, keystrokes, clipboard, and audio travel directly between Macs.
- The $7/month card is the annual price broken down. If you prefer true month-to-month, the official page does not print a standalone monthly rate — the FAQ only says monthly and yearly “start the day you buy them.”
- 20 minutes a day is a soft trial, not a demo lockout — the minutes reset daily and cover “everything,” which makes Free a usable host-anytime plan.
- Headless use still needs a display-capable host OS — the mini runs normal macOS with Beam installed; this is not a server edition.
- No Linux/Windows client and no shipped mobile app as of the check date.
Who it’s for
- Developers running Claude Code, Codex, or long builds on a Mac mini or Studio who want those windows on the Mac they actually use
- People who want remote access without a cloud relay — direct encrypted connections, no third-party server in the path
- Anyone price-anchoring agent infrastructure: a $7/mo (or $199 lifetime) seat with free hosting is an unusual deal in this category
- Not for: Windows/Linux-only setups, pre-Sonoma Macs, Intel Macs, or teams that need concurrent seats below 10 (the 20% team discount only starts at 10)
Sources
- https://beam.win (official homepage — window model, privacy, Tailscale, file transfer, headless-Mac positioning; fetched 2026-10-23)
- https://beam.win/pricing (official pricing page — Free/Subscription/Lifetime/Team tiers, FAQ on cancellation and plan switching; fetched 2026-10-23)
- https://www.producthunt.com/products/beam-win (launch page: “free to try for 20 minutes every day”, Apple silicon + Sonoma requirement, encrypted direct connections; fetched 2026-10-23)
- https://thenewstack.io/beam-mac-mini-agents (maker interview: Hiten Shah/Sam Asante, Noats Inc, share-link browser access, iOS/Android “on the way”, $12/mo wording — cross-checked; fetched 2026-10-23)
- https://nodus-ai.app/ph/today (daily leaderboard: Beam.win ▲ 356, daily winner for its launch day; fetched 2026-10-23)