Paste Review (2026): Pricing, Features & Honest Verdict

TLDR

A clipboard manager for Mac, iPhone, and iPad that saves everything you copy and now lets AI tools use your clipboard history through MCP. Best for: Developers and writers on Apple devices who copy constantly. Price: $2.49/mo. Rating: 7.4/10.

Paste is a clipboard manager for Mac, iPhone, and iPad that saves everything you copy and makes it searchable across devices. It just added MCP support, so AI tools like Claude and Codex can use your clipboard history as a memory layer. Best for developers and writers who copy constantly. Price: from $2.49/month, free trial. Rating: 7.4/10.

Clipboard managers are not new, and most people who need one already have one. So when Paste showed up near the top of Product Hunt on June 2, 2026, we figured there had to be a reason. There is. Paste shipped MCP support, which turns a familiar Mac utility into something more interesting: a searchable memory your AI tools can actually reach into.

What is Paste?

At its core, Paste is a clipboard history app. Everything you copy gets saved, organized, and made searchable, so the link you copied an hour ago or the code snippet from yesterday is one keystroke away instead of gone forever. It has been one of the most polished clipboard managers on the Mac for years, built by Paste Team ApS, and it syncs your history across Mac, iPhone, and iPad through your private iCloud.

The news is the MCP integration. Paste now runs a local MCP server, which means AI tools that speak Model Context Protocol, including Claude, Codex, and Cursor, can connect to your clipboard history. You can ask your AI tool to find something you copied earlier, pull saved context into a prompt without leaving the tool, or have it organize items into pinboards. Your clipboard becomes a memory layer the agents can query. And because the server runs locally, you decide which tools get access and can cut them off anytime.

What are Paste’s key features?

Infinite, searchable clipboard history

This is the foundation and Paste does it well. Every copy is stored and instantly searchable, with previews for links, images, and files. You can scroll back through everything you have copied and paste it without breaking your flow. The search is fast enough that finding a snippet from last week is genuinely quicker than going back to the source to copy it again. For anyone who copies dozens of things a day, this alone earns its keep.

Pinboards and smart organization

Paste lets you save items into pinboards, which are basically labeled collections for the things you reuse. Email signatures, boilerplate replies, brand colors, common code blocks. You can set custom rules to organize incoming copies automatically. It turns the clipboard from a dumb stack into something closer to a personal snippet library, and the new MCP support means an AI tool can build and manage those pinboards for you.

Cross-device sync

Copy something on your Mac and paste it on your iPhone. Paste syncs your full history across Apple devices through private iCloud, and it ships an iOS keyboard plus Siri Shortcuts so the history is usable on mobile, not just on the desktop. The privacy posture is a real selling point here. Your data stays on your device or in your own iCloud rather than on someone else’s server.

MCP and AI tool support

This is the feature that got Paste back into the conversation. The local MCP server connects your clipboard history to Claude, Codex, Cursor, and other MCP-aware tools. In practice that means your AI assistant can search what you copied, reuse saved context mid-task, and organize your pinboards. It is a small idea with a clever payoff, because so much of what you feed an AI tool is stuff you just copied from somewhere else. Giving the agent direct access to that history removes a lot of manual pasting.

How much does Paste cost?

Paste is cheap, which is part of its appeal. The Personal plan is $2.49 per month or $29.99 per year and covers Mac, iPhone, and iPad, with a one-time lifetime purchase also available if you would rather not subscribe. There is a free trial on all devices with no payment required upfront. If you already use Setapp, Paste is included in that bundle, which starts around $8.99 per month and throws in a pile of other Mac and iOS apps. There is a Paste for Teams plan as well, though pricing for it is not published.

Against the competition, the price is fair but not the floor. Raycast includes clipboard history in its free tier, and Maccy is a free, open-source clipboard manager. Alfred’s clipboard features come with its Powerpack, which is a one-time fee. So Paste is not the cheapest option on raw clipboard history. What you are paying for is the polish, the cross-device Apple sync, and now the MCP layer, which the free tools do not match. For $30 a year, if you live in your clipboard, it is an easy yes.

Who is Paste best for?

Use Paste if you are a developer, designer, or writer on Apple hardware who copies and pastes all day and wants that history searchable across your Mac and iPhone. The cross-device sync and clean interface make it a clear upgrade over the system clipboard. And if you have started building workflows around Claude, Codex, or Cursor, the MCP feature gives you a reason to pick Paste over the free alternatives, because it plugs your copy history straight into your AI tools.

Skip Paste if you live on Windows or Linux, because this is an Apple-only product. Skip it too if your clipboard needs are light, since the system clipboard or a free tool like Maccy or Raycast will cover you for nothing. And if you already pay for Raycast and use its clipboard history, the case for adding Paste is mostly the MCP layer and the mobile sync. Decide whether those two things are worth the subscription before switching.

Best Paste alternatives

Raycast. Raycast is a launcher with clipboard history built into its free tier, and it has become the default for a lot of Mac power users. It is free for the core features and does far more than clipboard management. The trade-off is that it does not match Paste’s dedicated cross-device sync to iPhone and iPad, and its clipboard view is less visual.

Alfred. Alfred is the long-standing Mac productivity app, and its Powerpack adds clipboard history along with workflows and snippets. It is a one-time purchase rather than a subscription, which some people prefer. It is Mac-only though, with no mobile sync, and the interface feels more utilitarian than Paste’s.

Maccy. Maccy is a free, open-source clipboard manager for Mac. It is lightweight, fast, and does the one job well. If all you want is searchable clipboard history at zero cost and you do not care about mobile sync, pinboards, or MCP, Maccy is the honest answer.

Final verdict: Is Paste worth it?

Paste was already one of the best clipboard managers on the Mac, and the MCP support is a genuinely smart addition rather than a bolted-on AI gimmick. So much of working with AI tools is pasting in context you just copied from somewhere, and letting the agent reach into your clipboard history directly removes a real piece of friction. Combine that with fast search, clean pinboards, and proper cross-device sync, and you have a utility that quietly saves you time every single day.

The honest knock is that clipboard history is available for free elsewhere, so Paste has to justify its subscription on polish, Apple sync, and the new AI layer. For most casual users, a free tool is enough. But if you copy constantly, work across a Mac and an iPhone, and have started wiring AI tools into your day, Paste is worth the $30 a year. Try the free trial first, lean on the MCP feature, and see if your clipboard starts feeling like a tool instead of an afterthought.