Commander One ships in two distinct versions and which one you should compare against depends on what you actually want. The Mac App Store version is sandboxed and free, missing terminal / OneDrive / WebDAV / S3. The PRO direct version ($29.99 once, or $99.99 for five Macs) has all that, but no Vim, no Git, no plugins. Captain’s Deck offers a single feature-aware app at €19.99.
If you’re comparing to Captain’s Deck, you need to know which Commander One you’re looking at — the feature gap is real.
Free, fully sandboxed. Has dual-pane, tabs, FTP/SFTP, Dropbox, Google Drive. Missing: built-in terminal (sandbox doesn’t allow), OneDrive, WebDAV, Amazon S3, Process Viewer, root operations, iOS device mounting. If your needs are basic remote browsing, this is genuinely free and works.
$29.99 one-time for one Mac (Team licence $99.99 for five). Adds all the features the App Store sandbox blocks — embedded terminal, OneDrive (incl. Business), WebDAV, Amazon S3, Backblaze B2, OpenStack Swift, Box, Process Viewer, root operations. Missing vs us: Vim navigation, Git workflow, JS plugin SDK, custom themes, audit log.
We ship the same app on the Mac App Store and as a direct download. The Mac App Store build is sandboxed (no terminal, no plugins, no privileged helper) but free of feature paywalls. The direct build (€19.99) has everything. No PRO upgrade tier — same code, different distribution.
Three preset keyboard layouts (Orthodox / macOS / Vim). Single-key Vim verbs (y / p / dd) on the Vim preset. Commander One uses customisable hotkeys but doesn’t have a built-in Vim mode.
File-level Git status badges in the panes, full Git Status Panel (⌘+⇧+G) for stage/unstage/commit, side-by-side diff against HEAD, hunk-level merge keys in the F9 viewer. Commander One doesn’t advertise Git integration in either build.
Twelve-permission capability model, sandboxed JS runtime, full captain.* API. Add context-menu items, custom commands, file-system providers, status-bar items. Commander One has no plugin system.
OSC 7-based bidirectional cwd sync. Per-tab terminal sessions on top — each pane tab has its own shell. Commander One PRO has a terminal but it doesn’t auto-sync with the active pane (and the App Store version doesn’t have a terminal at all).
Modern, Paper, Norton Commander, and Midnight Commander themes built in. Norton has CRT scanlines, phosphor glow, and period system-sound effects. Custom themes via JSON in the user’s Application Support folder.
Saved searches surface in the sidebar like bookmarks. Click to re-run against the active pane’s path with the same query, mode, and filters you saved.
Commander One Free is genuinely free, forever. If you only need basic dual-pane + tabs + FTP without paying anything, that’s a real choice. We have a 14-day trial; after that, you pay €19.99.
Commander One PRO can browse iOS devices over USB (photos, app data). MTP for Android too. We don’t do that — iOS is via Finder/iCloud, Android via the official Android File Transfer.
PRO supports OpenStack Swift and Box natively. We have Rackspace (also Swift-based) and most other major providers, but Box specifically isn’t on our list yet.
Commander One Free: $0. Sandboxed App Store build, missing terminal / OneDrive / WebDAV / S3.
Commander One PRO: $29.99 once for one Mac (Team $99.99 for five), all features unlocked, direct download (not on the App Store).
Captain’s Deck: €19.99 once. Same code on App Store and direct — the App Store version is sandboxed for security but isn’t feature-paywalled separately.
If you need PRO-tier features and don’t want Vim or Git, Commander One PRO at $29.99 is reasonable. If you want everything plus Vim and Git for less, we’re €19.99.
Then €19.99 once if you keep it. No upgrade tiers, no subscriptions.