Frequently Asked Questions

If you have any questions that aren't answered by this FAQ, feel free to contact me on Twitter, BlueSky or via email.

Can I get unlimited documents and exports without paying a yearly fee?

Yes! If you sign up for a pro account, and then cancel your subscription, you will only be charged for the first year, but you'll keep unlimited documents and exports for life, you just won't get document syncing and sharing after the first year. Please note: you do have to pay for the first year, if it gets refunded you won't keep access to all pro features.

Can I create an account without signing up for NumPad Pro?

No, currently accounts are only for paid users. This keeps server costs down, which is helpful for a bootstrapped business.

I'm a free user, can I see what PDF exports look like?

Sure! Here are light mode, and dark mode examples.

Are you going to make a desktop app?

I intend to make one soon. Probably a macOS app first. If you'd like to know when this happens, sign up to the NumPad mailing list here.

Are you going to make an iOS/Android app?

I have no immediate plans to, but NumPad works well in mobile browsers. I would like to make at least an iOS app at some point, but I will probably only do this if I can create an input method that's better-suited to a mobile calculator app than the default keyboard. You can sign up to the mailing list to get notified if and when this happens.

Are you going to make a command line app?

Quite possibly. But it will be a paid-only feature. You can sign up to the mailing list for updates.

Can I get NumPad as an Obsidian plugin?

I would like to make an Obsidian plugin, but as far as I'm aware they are all free, and I would only want to do this as a paid feature. If I can find a way to make it paid, then I'd probably make one. You can sign up to the mailing list for updates.

How about an Alfred plugin?

I'm not an Alfred user, but if there's demand, I might. Again this will probably be a paid-only feature. You can sign up to the mailing list for updates.

Do you by any chance have a mailing list?

Funny you should ask that. Yes, you can sign up to it here.

Who makes NumPad?

It's just me, Tony. There's no big company and no investors, so I do everything myself.

Did you invent the notepad calculator?

No, I was inspired by Soulver, which—according to their FAQ—was inspired by MathPad. I'm grateful to these pioneers.

What's the NumPad tech stack?

NumPad is written in TypeScript and uses React. The editor is CodeMirror, and I use Automerge to manage data syncing and persistence. Documents are persisted to IndexedDB on the front end, and the backend is a Bun app that persists data to PostgreSQL. The calculation engine uses fraction.js to represent numbers, but is otherwise custom made. Parsing is handled with a custom parser-combinator library called NumParse that is inspired by Eulalie, but with a focus on type safety. PDFs are generated with React-pdf, and I also wrote a custom parser to handle markdown. Icons are from Remix Icon.