Pricing
We charge for the product. Nothing else. No ads, no data sold, no upsells aimed at your children — ever.
Shoal is free while it's in beta. No card needed. The plans below are what Shoal will cost once the beta ends. Families already using Shoal will be told well in advance before any charges begin.
Built so that cost isn't the reason your child can't talk to their best friend.
Or £27 / year — saves about 10%.
Choose Small familyFree during the beta · no card needed
Up to 3 people in the family, adults and children in any mix.
For example, one child and two parents, or a parent and two children.
Room for everyone
For families of four or more — grandparents, step-parents and all.
Or £38.40 / year — saves 20%.
Choose Full familyFree during the beta · no card needed
Up to 10 adults and 10 children in the family.
Room for both sides of the family, step-parents and grandparents included. Need more? Get in touch.
These are the prices once the beta ends. New families will then get 90 days free before paying anything.
Prices in pounds sterling. VAT shown at checkout where applicable.
The only thing that changes between Small family and Full family is how many people can be in the family. Every feature is in both plans.
Shoal is in beta, and it's free to use for the foreseeable future: every feature, for every family, with no card needed. We're building it with the families using it now. When paid plans begin, families already using Shoal will be told well in advance before any charges begin.
Once paid plans begin, each new family gets 90 days free. No card up front. The clock starts the day you create the family — not the day you sign up — so you've got room to come back next weekend and try Shoal properly.
We'll nudge you well before the trial ends. If nobody in the family has subscribed by day 90, the family enters a 30-day read-only window: existing messages stay readable, but no new messages can be sent or received. During that month you can subscribe to reactivate, transfer the family admin role to another adult who'd like to subscribe, or export the chat history. After 30 days, the family and its messages are permanently deleted.
One subscription covers every person in your family — children, parents, step-parents, grandparents — and all of their devices. You aren't charged per user. You aren't charged per device. We don't want you doing arithmetic every time you add Granny to the chat.
If you belong to more than one family — a divorced household, a stepfamily group, an extended-family chat — each family has its own subscription, paid by whoever created it. You don't pay twice for being in two families.
A child on the Small family plan can chat with a child on the Full family plan, and vice versa, as long as both families' family admins approve the connection. The Small family plan exists specifically so that the difference between £2.50 and £4 a month isn't the thing standing between your child and their friend.
Families have lulls — a year abroad, a stretch where the kids are with the other parent, the gap between your eldest growing out of Shoal and your youngest growing into it. You can pause your subscription for up to twelve months without losing any data, and come back when it matters again.
Subscriptions, monthly or annual, can be cancelled from inside your account, with no friction, at any point. Cancelling stops the next renewal, and you keep access until the end of the period you've paid for. We don't make this hard.
Show advertising. Sell or share your data with anyone. Train AI on your family's messages. Run upsells aimed at your children. Charge you to export your own conversations. Charge extra for encryption. These aren't promotional promises — they are the reason Shoal exists at all.
Yes, while it's in beta — and we expect that to be the case for the foreseeable future. Every feature is included and no card is needed. The plans on this page are what Shoal will cost once the beta ends. Families already using Shoal will be told well in advance before any charges begin.
Because the family is the thing we're trying to serve. Per-user pricing punishes you for adding the people we want you to add — your kids' grandparents, the second parent, the shared family device that gets passed between siblings. One price, everyone in.
If your family is three people or fewer — one child and two parents, say, or a parent and two children — the Small family plan is for you. If there are more of you, or you want grandparents and step-parents in the family group, you'll want the Full family plan: up to 10 adults and 10 children. You can upgrade at any time if your family grows.
You cancel, or pause if you've got younger children who'll need it in a few years. Teens shouldn't be on a parental-oversight messaging app forever — that isn't the product we're building.
Prices on this page are in pounds sterling. We'll show VAT clearly at checkout where it applies — UK customers will see VAT-inclusive prices at point of sale.
Get in touch — hello@shoal.chat. We don't want a kid's friendships limited by household circumstance. We're a small company and can't promise anything blanket, but we'd rather hear about the specifics than have someone locked out.
Yes. You can download a human-readable HTML archive of your family's chat history at any time — during an active subscription, during the read-only window after a trial ends, or before account deletion. No Shoal-specific software is needed to read it.
By card, on the Shoal website rather than through the App Store or Google Play, using our payment processor. Apple Pay and Google Pay work too, where your browser offers them. We don't take or store your card details directly — they go to the processor.
Free during the beta. Passwordless sign-in. Bring whoever you want.
Free during the beta · no card needed