What it costs
You pay for a license. Not for your coursework.
Your syllabi, your assignments, your deadlines: read on your own machine, kept on your own machine. None of it ever reaches us. What your money buys here is the run of the software, never a copy of your academic life.
Charging money on a site that promises privacy only makes sense if the line is clear, so here it is. Reading your syllabus, gathering your assignments, and watching for changes all happen on your own machine. We never see your coursework — not your syllabi, not your assignment titles, not your due dates, not your grades. What we do keep is only what signs you in and keeps your device current: your account, your plan, a record of your device, and a sealed key that connects you to Todoist. Through the company that handles your payment we also learn your name, your email, and a stand-in code that ties the purchase to your account.
That is the whole promise: no student records leave your device, so we never become a keeper of them. The pass costs money, not coursework. The rest of the picture lives on the privacy page.
01Free
Free
$0
No account, no card
The first week, handled. Nothing to set up.
- Add the plugin and your Canvas assignments and calendar feeds sync for the next week — onto the dashboard and into your Todoist.
- No Margin account to make, no card. Connect your Todoist once and the week lands there too.
- The near term stays current on its own; the whole semester is the Pass.
- Your coursework stays on your device. Try the preview first — the next two weeks laid out, and the shape of the term behind them.
The near-term reading is free; the whole-term gathering and watching is the Pass.
02Margin Pass
Margin Pass
$9.99
Per semester · non-renewing
Put it on the family card. It's a school supply, technically.
The whole term, gathered and watched over.
- The whole semester in sight — not just the first week the free tier keeps current.
- It gathers your work from every course site on its own — Canvas, Gradescope, PrairieLearn — due dates and all.
- A calm panel beside your work, and word the moment a professor moves a date.
- Export your term whenever you like.
- Your coursework still never leaves your device.
It does not auto-renew. When the term ends, we send one honest email and let it lapse.
03The device
Margin device
$189
One time · software included
The rung that ends the paying.
- The e-paper desk dashboard, hand-assembled and numbered.
- The software is included; there's no pass to renew.
- The list lives off the laptop, on a screen that doesn't glow.
- Everything the pass does, on a device built to outlast a degree.
- One-year warranty, thirty-day returns. The terms, plainly.
$189 expected; pre-orders via a small Kickstarter when the build's ready; first fifty in 2028. The number we're building toward.
What you actually pay for.
The free tier already does the near-term reading for you, so the reading is not the sale. Two things you can't get for free:
- Whole-semester foresight. Your course calendar only looks about two weeks ahead. Reading the syllabus brings the whole term to light — the readings and exam weeks named only in the prose, the ones no course calendar ever lists.
- Watching for changes. A syllabus you upload once sits still; when the professor moves the midterm, the new date appears on the course site, not in the copy you handed over months ago. Margin Pass holds each fresh look against the last and tells you what moved — all of it on your own machine.
You're paying for the watching that goes on, not the one-time gathering. The honest catch: the watching lives on each device, and it cannot see changes from before you set it up. We say so plainly here rather than pretend it caught something it never could.
Why a pass that ends.
Software like this usually comes as a subscription — a charge that renews every month, for as long as you keep it. Margin Pass is $9.99 a semester and does not renew. We'd rather email you at the end of term and let you decide again than bill a card you forgot about over the summer. A pass that quietly renews is the thing we're trying not to become.
The device is the rung where the paying stops. Buy one and the software comes with it: no pass, no renewal, nothing to remember. To be straight about the math, a per-semester pass won't add up to $189 inside a degree, so the device isn't a money-saving upgrade. It's a different creature entirely — the list off your laptop, on a screen that sits on your desk and doesn't glow. When the pass goes on sale, that's the rung we'll sell first; the device is the one we're building toward.
Where the money touches us.
Paying leaves just one mark on our side: a note that says your pass is paid up. Buying runs through an outside company that handles the tax, the receipt, and any refund, which passes us your name, your email, and a stand-in code that ties the purchase to your account. That is everything a purchase leaves behind.
No syllabus, assignment, due date, or grade is any part of that. The privacy page sets out, line by line, what each connection touches and where every piece of your work rests. It comes back to the line at the top of this page: you pay for a license; your coursework never touches our machines.
Not ready to pay anything?
The free tier stays free. Start there, see the calm for yourself, and pay only if the foresight earns it. Or leave an email and hear about it when there's something to act on.