Software
you own.

Freeholder makes personal software that runs on your machine, stores your data in files you can read, and never charges you again after you buy it.

No subscriptions. No cloud accounts. No lock-in. Your data stays yours, in a folder you control, readable by any text editor, forever.

Built by Shahid Ahmad — 40 years in software, from 6502 assembly to AI.

Philosophy

Why this exists

Personal computing drifted from something you owned to something that owns you. We rent the tools we used to buy. We pay trillion-dollar companies to keep our files on their hard drives instead of the ones we already have. Every interaction we used to experience directly has become mediated.

Freeholder points the extraordinary tools we have now — AI included — back at the person using them, not the platform selling them.

No subscriptions
You buy it once. You own it. That's it.
Local first
Your data lives on your machine. No accounts, no cloud sync, no dependency on our servers.
Human-readable data
Markdown and JSON in folders you choose. Open it in any text editor.
Single purpose
Each app does one thing well. No bloat, ever.
Opinionated design
Decades of interface experience, not design by committee.
Replaceable
Your data works without us. If you leave, you lose nothing.
Apps

Each Freeholder app is independent, single-purpose, and works with plain files. They interoperate but never depend on each other.

Reverie Early Access £29 £39 at 1.0

A journal that uses your own recent entries as writing prompts and provocations. No AI. No cloud. Your words, surfaced back to you at the right moment. Think of it as a conversation with yourself — one that gets more useful the longer you write.

Buy Reverie
Horizon Early Access £29 £39 at 1.0

Your important dates in a 3D perspective timeline. Birthdays, anniversaries, deadlines — visualised so nothing slips past you. Your data stays in a folder you control, in files you can read.

Buy Horizon
More apps are coming. Each will follow the same principles — single purpose, local first, no subscriptions, your data. If you want to know when they ship, leave your email below.
Pricing
Ownership
A one-time purchase. No subscription, no recurring fee, no "your trial has expired." You buy it, you own it.
Early access — free upgrades forever
If you buy now at £29, every future version is yours free. Forever. Including the native Mac and iOS apps when they ship. This is a gesture of gratitude for the faith of the early believers. You took a chance on us at the beginning. We won't forget that.
After 1.0
The price rises to £39. Major version upgrades after that will be £10 per app. Bug fixes and refinements are always free. A major version means meaningful new capability — we will never ship one just to charge you.
Your data
Every Freeholder app stores everything in plain files — Markdown and JSON — in a folder you choose on your own device. No account, no cloud, no lock-in. If you stop using Freeholder tomorrow, your data is still yours, readable by any text editor.
No trial. No lockout.
Freeholder apps have no trial timer and no feature gating. They are fully functional from the moment you open them. We trust you to pay if you find them useful.

The only people who see the copyright warning on a Blu-ray are the ones who bought it.

Current requirements: Reverie and Horizon currently run in any Chromium-based browser — Chrome, Arc, Edge, or Brave — on Mac, Windows, or Linux. Safari and Firefox are not yet supported. Native apps for Mac, Windows, iOS, and Linux are in development and will be free to all early access buyers.

Stay informed

New apps, updates, and the occasional opinion on personal software. No spam. No nonsense.

Your email is used only to notify you about Freeholder. Nothing else. Unsubscribe any time.

Who's behind this

My name is Shahid Ahmad. I've been building software since 1982. I spent a decade at PlayStation, where I led Strategic Content — the initiative that transformed PlayStation's relationship with independent developers and served as a model for the industry — and commissioned No Man's Sky, one of the most remarkable indie success stories in gaming, and Hellblade. I've judged BAFTAs, shaped careers, and watched the games industry reinvent itself half a dozen times.

Now I'm building personal software that reflects what I've learned across four decades: that the best tools are the ones that respect the person using them. That simplicity is harder than complexity and worth more. That your data is yours and nobody else's business.

You're the freeholder.