Which FastStone Products Are Free and Which Require a One-Time Purchase?

Updated

FastStone's product line splits into two licensing groups. FastStone Image Viewer and FastStone Photo Resizer are listed as free for personal use. FastStone Capture and FastStone MaxView are listed as one-time purchase products. The free/paid label on the official product listing is the starting point for deciding, but the exact license terms and current price for each paid product should be confirmed on its own product page before you buy.

The four products and their licensing status

Product Version shown License status What it does
FastStone Image Viewer 8.5 Free for personal use Image browser, converter and editor supporting BMP, JPEG, HEIC, WEBP, GIF, PNG, PCX, PDF, PSD, TIFF, WMF, ICO, TGA and camera raw files; includes viewing, management, comparison, red-eye removal, emailing, resizing, cropping, color adjustments and musical slideshow
FastStone Photo Resizer 4.5 Free for personal use Batch image converter and renaming tool for converting, renaming, resizing, cropping, rotating, changing color depth, and adding text and watermarks
FastStone Capture 11.3 One-time purchase Screen capture tool for windows, objects, menus, full screen, rectangular and freehand regions, plus scrolling windows and web pages; also records screen activity, sound and webcam to MP4
FastStone MaxView 3.5 One-time purchase Compact image viewer supporting major graphic formats; opens images inside password-protected ZIP, RAR and 7-Zip archives instantly; viewing, rotating, resizing, cropping, annotating and printing

What "free for personal use" means in practice

The listing labels Image Viewer and Photo Resizer as free for personal use. That wording matters: it describes the scope of the free grant, not an unlimited free license for every context. If your use is commercial or organizational rather than personal, the free-for-personal-use label does not by itself answer whether your use is covered — check the product's own license page for the terms that apply to you.

The paid products are described differently: as a one-time purchase, not a subscription. That tells you the payment model is a single payment rather than recurring billing, but the listing does not state the amount. Treat the price as something to look up on the product page.

How to decide which one you need

The licensing question and the "which tool do I need" question are linked, because the free tools and the paid tools do different jobs:

  • You mainly view, organize, convert or lightly edit existing images. Image Viewer (free for personal use) covers browsing, format conversion, comparison, cropping, color adjustment and slideshows. Photo Resizer (free for personal use) is the batch option when you need to convert, rename, resize or watermark many files at once.
  • You need to capture or record your screen. That is FastStone Capture, a one-time purchase. It handles regions, scrolling windows and web pages, and MP4 recording with sound and webcam.
  • You need to open images inside password-protected archives, or want a minimal fast viewer. That is FastStone MaxView, a one-time purchase. Its distinguishing feature is opening images directly inside password-protected ZIP, RAR and 7-Zip archives.

A practical sequence: start with the free tools if your task is viewing, converting or batch-resizing. Move to a paid product only when your task is screen capture/recording (Capture) or archive-contained viewing (MaxView).

Before you buy

  1. Open the individual product page for the paid product you are considering.
  2. Confirm the current license terms and the current price there — the product listing gives the model ("one-time purchase") but not the figure.
  3. If you are using a free product, confirm that your use falls within "personal use" as defined by that product's license.

Version numbers and dates on the listing change over time, so verify the release you are downloading matches what you expect.