Photography · pricing
RawTherapee pricing
RawTherapee publishes a single tier. Below is what it costs, what it covers, and how that compares with the photography tools listed alongside it.
As of 31 August 2026, RawTherapee pricing is free. Figures are the vendor's list prices as recorded on this page's last check; the vendor's site is the final word.
- Entry price
- Free
- Model
- Open source, no licence fee
- Tiers
- 1
- Free tier
- Yes
RawTherapee plans, side by side
Every published tier in ascending order of price, with the number of features each one lists. An absence here means the record does not itemise it, not that the tier lacks it.
| Plan | Price | Features listed | Step up from the tier below |
|---|---|---|---|
| RawTherapee | Free | 3 | Entry tier |
Where RawTherapee stops being free
RawTherapee, Free
- GPL licensed with no seat limit
- All processing features included
- Documentation and support through RawPedia and the community forum
No paid tier on record
RawTherapee lists a free tier and no priced tier above it in the record we hold.
What the product covers
The full RawTherapee feature record, grouped as the catalogue groups it. This is the product as a whole; the record does not map every feature onto a specific tier.
Other
- Selectable demosaicing
- Floating point pipeline
- Local adjustments
- Wavelet levels
- Processing profiles
- Colour management
People bring RawTherapee in for difficult raw files where the demosaicing algorithm visibly changes the result, such as fine fabric, foliage or architectural detail, archive and restoration work where a free tool with strict colour management is preferable to a subscription, photographers who want to understand and control each processing stage rather than accept a vendor rendering, producing a high quality sixteen bit tiff to hand to gimp or another editor for compositing. If that is not the job you are buying for, the alternatives to RawTherapee are worth a look before you commit to a tier.
How that compares in Photography
Too few photography tools in this directory publish a starting price to quote a meaningful median, so the table below is a like-for-like list rather than a ranking.
| Tool | Entry price | Model | Rated | Head to head |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| RawTherapee (this page) | Free | Open source, no licence fee | - | |
| Aftershoot | On request | Per module per month, unlimited images | - | vs RawTherapee |
| Google Photos | Free | Free tier plus paid storage add-on | - | vs RawTherapee |
| Facetune | Free | Free download with a short free trial, most tools require a Facetune Pro subscription that auto-renews annually | - | vs RawTherapee |
| Lensa | Free | Free download with a short free trial, Magic Avatars and most tools require payment | - | vs RawTherapee |
| Imagen AI | On request | Per image, with annual volume tiers | - | vs RawTherapee |
| Narrative Select | On request | Per user per month, tiered by editing depth | - | vs RawTherapee |
Ratings are aggregated from third-party sources and imported with each catalogue entry, they are not reviews hosted on Softwr. How each figure is used is set out on the RawTherapee badges page.
Before you pay for RawTherapee
Three things this page cannot tell you, and all three change the bill. The record carries a price and a billing period but not the unit - per-seat and flat-rate pricing are indistinguishable in this data, so a five-person team may be looking at five times the figure above. It carries no annual rate, so any discount for paying yearly is not something this page can quote. And it carries no trial length.
What it can tell you is the shape of the ladder: a single tier at Free. Because there is a free tier, the cheapest way to answer the rest is to use it before paying anything.
RawTherapee runs on linux, windows, macos, and is published by RawTherapee development team of Distributed, worldwide. The full record is on the RawTherapee review, and the rest of the category is under best photography tools.
RawTherapee pricing questions
- How much does RawTherapee cost?
- RawTherapee publishes a single tier, RawTherapee, at Free.
- Does RawTherapee have a free plan?
- Yes. The RawTherapee tier costs nothing and covers gpl licensed with no seat limit, all processing features included, documentation and support through rawpedia and the community forum.
- Which photography tools can I use without paying?
- 3 of the 8 photography tools listed alongside RawTherapee have a free tier: Google Photos, Facetune, Lensa.
- What am I actually paying for with RawTherapee?
- The record lists 6 features across 1 area: other. In practice it is brought in for difficult raw files where the demosaicing algorithm visibly changes the result, such as fine fabric, foliage or architectural detail, archive and restoration work where a free tool with strict colour management is preferable to a subscription, photographers who want to understand and control each processing stage rather than accept a vendor rendering.
- Does RawTherapee charge per user?
- The record carries a price and a billing period for each of its 1 tiers, but not the unit that price is charged in. Per-seat and flat-rate billing look identical in this data, so check the vendor's page before budgeting for a team.
- Are these RawTherapee prices current?
- They are what the catalogue entry holds, refreshed when the entry is. Vendors change pricing without notice and nobody at Softwr re-verifies each tier by hand, so treat this as a structured summary and the vendor's own pricing page as the authority.
- What should I compare RawTherapee against before paying?
- The closest photography tools in this directory are Aftershoot, Google Photos, Facetune, Lensa. Each has a side-by-side comparison with RawTherapee covering price, platforms and features.