Why I Made VeraMile Free Forever
When I started building VeraMile, I never once considered charging for the core product.
Not because I’m naive about money. Because the whole thing falls apart if people don’t log their data.
The App Is Only Useful If People Actually Use It
VeraMile tracks your MPG, your fuel costs, your maintenance, your true cost per mile. It shows you a leaderboard of real drivers in your vehicle class. It crowdsources gas prices from actual users at actual stations.
None of that works if people bounce at a paywall.
A fuel tracking app with 200 paying users is a niche tool. A fuel tracking app with 200,000 active users is a community — and a community is something competitors can’t easily copy.
The free tier was never a compromise. It was the strategy.
What “Free Forever” Actually Means
Every core feature is free. No trial period. No “limited fills per month.” No leaderboard access locked behind a subscription.
Log every fill-up
Track every expense
See your true cost per mile
Compete on the leaderboard
Join and create challenges
Crowdsource and browse gas prices
Earn badges and cosmetics
Monthly quests
That’s the whole product. Free.
I’m not going to pull a bait-and-switch six months from now. The features that are free today stay free.
So How Does VeraMile Make Money
The free tier requires you to log things manually. That’s intentional — the act of logging is what makes you pay attention.
But not everyone wants to type in numbers at the pump. Some people want to snap a photo of their receipt and move on. That’s Premium.
Point your camera at a repair receipt and VeraMile reads it, logs the expense, and automatically updates your vehicle health dashboard. Oil change receipt — logged. Tire rotation — logged. The app figures out what was done, what it cost, and when you’ll need it again.
Premium also stores your receipts, surfaces smart service reminders based on your actual mileage patterns, and will eventually connect to an OBD dongle to pull real-time data directly from your car.
The free tier is: you tell VeraMile what happened. Premium is: VeraMile figures it out for you.
Why This Model Makes Sense for Car Owners
Most subscription apps charge you for access. Pay or you can’t use the thing.
VeraMile is structured differently. The free tier is the full product. Premium is about effort — how much work you want to do yourself vs. how much you want the app to handle.
If you don’t mind logging manually, you never need to pay. If you want to snap a photo and be done with it, Premium is $4.99 a month.
The Real Bet
I believe that if you give car owners a genuinely useful free product and treat them like adults, some of them will pay for the thing that’s actually worth paying for.
That’s the bet. Not freemium tricks. Not manufactured urgency. Not locking the leaderboard until you enter a credit card.
Just: here’s the tool, it’s free, use it. And when you’ve been using it long enough that your car history is in there and you want the app to start working for you — that’s when Premium makes sense.
Start free at app.veramile.com.
— Stephen, founder of VeraMile