# Sip review (2026): is it worth paying for? > Mac color picker with palettes, formats and a contrast checker Checked Nov 13, 2026 ยท graded Nov 13, 2026 by ToolGPA. Sip is a Mac color picker that lives in the menu bar and a full window. It picks colors from the screen, organizes them into palettes and sub-palettes, converts them to the format your app needs and checks contrast. It is sold as a per-seat license with a year of updates. - **Category:** Desktop Utilities - **Made by:** Sip - **Website:** https://sipapp.io/ - **Runs on:** macOS - **Who should skip it:** Not for you if you use Windows, as there is no version for it. - **Facts last checked:** Nov 13, 2026 ## Pricing As of Nov 13, 2026, Sip is a paid product with a free trial, starting at $29.99 per seat. - **Pricing model:** Free trial - **Free plan:** None. - **Free trial:** 15-day free trial, no credit card required. | Plan | Price | What you get | | --- | --- | --- | | Sip license | $29.99 per seat, includes 1 year of updates | Keep using the version you downloaded after the year, or extend the license for 70% of the original price. 30-day money-back guarantee. | Read from https://sipapp.io/pricing/ on Nov 13, 2026. Prices change, so confirm with Sip before buying. ## Ways to pay less - **50% education discount** (Education): Sip's pricing page offers 50% off to people in education; send proof of enrollment by email, and the page says review can take up to 2 business days. Source: https://sipapp.io/pricing/ ## Key features - **Screen picker:** Pick one or several colors from anywhere on screen with keyboard shortcuts and send them to other tools. - **Palettes and sub-palettes:** Organize colors with descriptions and nested palettes, and share them with a team. - **Smart formats and profiles:** Detects the frontmost app to choose a color format and applies the matching color profile. - **Contrast checker:** Flags low-contrast text and background pairs and can save corrected colors as a new palette. - **Color vision simulation:** Previews palettes as seen with protanopia, deuteranopia, tritanopia and achromatopsia. - **Color dock:** Keeps favorite colors on any screen edge. ## Good for - Designers and developers who pick colors from the screen all day - Teams that share palettes - Mac users who want a menu bar color tool ## Worth knowing - Runs on macOS only; there is no Windows version. - The license includes one year of updates; after that, updates need a paid extension at 70% of the original price. - Also available through Setapp. - Sync and sharing between devices are listed as features, but the pages do not describe plan limits for them. ## ToolGPA grades **GPA: 2.4 out of 4**, graded Nov 13, 2026. Sip picks colors from the screen on a Mac, keeps them in palettes, converts formats and checks contrast. It is $29.99 per seat with one year of updates, then 70% of the price to keep getting them, and it runs on Mac only. - **Value for money: B.** $29.99 per seat with a year of updates, then a 70% extension. Over two years it is about $51, under two years of this category's middle subscription. - **Free plan and trial: C.** A 15-day trial with no credit card, and no free plan. - **Features: B.** Screen picker, palettes and sub-palettes, format conversion, contrast checker, color vision simulation and a dock. The listing names no gap in the core job. - **Ease of use: B.** No store rating is on record, but you install it and click a pixel with nothing to set up. - **Platforms and integrations: D.** macOS only. There is no Windows version. These are ToolGPA's own grades. Graded from this listing, whose facts were read from Sip's own pages on 13 November 2026. Not based on using the product, and shorter than our full reviews. ## Where it stands among desktop utilities - Sip's GPA of 2.4 is higher than 35 of the 186 other desktop utilities we grade, and level with 33. - It stands best on features (B, above 113 of 186) and worst on platforms and integrations (D, above 0). The category's chart of price against score: https://toolgpa.com/charts/utilities ## Keep it, or make your own? **Your call.** It depends on the utility: a converter or a calculator is an afternoon. Sip sits between: not beyond making, and not a weekend's work either. What you would give up is listed below. Whether that is worth the price is your call. - You could not: A native app living in the menu bar. - You could not: A real app for macOS. Something home-made would be a web page. - You could not: The depth: we grade its features B, which means it covers the whole job. A judgement by ToolGPA from this listing, by rules that are the same for every tool. Nothing was built to test it. ## Works with Setapp **Tags:** Menu bar app, One-time purchase ## Alternatives - [ColorSnapper](https://toolgpa.com/tools/colorsnapper): Mac color picker with a magnifying glass and 30+ export formats. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/colorsnapper-vs-sip) - [Just Color Picker](https://toolgpa.com/tools/just-color-picker): Free portable color picker and editor for Windows and macOS. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/just-color-picker-vs-sip) - [Raycast](https://toolgpa.com/tools/raycast): Keyboard launcher with extensions, clipboard history and AI. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/raycast-vs-sip) - [Microsoft PowerToys](https://toolgpa.com/tools/microsoft-powertoys): Free Microsoft utilities for customizing Windows 10 and 11. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/microsoft-powertoys-vs-sip) ## Sources The prices, plans, platforms and features above were read from these pages on Nov 13, 2026: - https://sipapp.io/ - https://sipapp.io/pricing/ Page: https://toolgpa.com/tools/sip Listed by ToolGPA (toolgpa.com).