Frequently asked questions

About Soulver - the world's best notepad calculator

If your question is not answered here, send us an email or a message on X. We're happy to help.

Where can I get Soulver 4?

Soulver 4 is available as a one-time (non-subscription) purchase of $59 on the App Store.

One purchase gives you access to all 3 platforms (Mac, iPhone & iPad). This is 20% more affordable than the previous version, which we sold separately per platform.

If you only need the iPhone version, it's also available as a separate purchase of $15.

Soulver is also available on Setapp (260+ apps for $15/month).

Can I try Soulver before purchasing?

Yes: we offer a no-commitment 60-day trial. No account required.

You are not charged when the trial ends. You may purchase or delete Soulver at any time, during or after the trial.

After the trial ends, you can continue to view any sheets you have created (although they will no longer be editable).

Do you offer upgrade pricing from Soulver 3?

Yes. If you bought Soulver 3 on the App Store, you get Soulver 4 for half price — $29 instead of $59.

Additionally, if you bought the direct download of Soulver 3, install Soulver 4 from the App Store on the same Mac where Soulver 3 is registered — it'll detect your purchase and unlock the same 50% discount for you.

Can I stay with Soulver 3 if I don't want to upgrade to 4?

Of course. On the App Store, Soulver 3 and 4 are the same app: you stay on the Soulver 3 feature set until you choose to unlock Soulver 4's features, with an optional in-app purchase.

New features come to Soulver 4 — feel free to upgrade whenever you feel like it, or never.

The direct download of Soulver 3 will also keep getting system-compatibility updates.

What are the system requirements for Soulver 4?

The Mac version requires macOS 14 (Sonoma) or newer, and is compatible with the latest macOS 27 (Golden Gate).

The iPad & iPhone versions require iOS/iPadOS 17 or later, and are compatible with the latest iOS/iPadOS 27.

Common questions

Can I get Soulver to ignore certain numbers in my text?

Sure, use a comment:

Can I turn off notation in answers?

By default Soulver formats your large answers with SI notation:

To disable this notation, go to the Format menu and untick Notation for Large Numbers.

You can also access line-specific formatting settings by clicking the action button on an answer:

To turn off notation for all lines, go to

Settings > Calculator > Number Formatting

and disable Notation for Large Numbers

In Soulver, 1 GB equals 1000 MB. But isn't 1 GB actually 1024 MB?

Soulver conforms to the industry standard binary prefix system, which you can read about here:

Binary prefixWikipedia

The gist of it is that new units (KiB, MiB, GiB) have been introduced to represent base 2 binary units, so that kB, MB & GB can behave like normal base 10 SI units.

Design, history & philosophy of Soulver

What were the original design goals for Soulver?

For the first Soulver (released in 2005) our goal was to invent a better calculator interface for computers.

To us, this meant:

Answers calculate live – no explicit press of an equals button required
Support for adding commenting words alongside calculations, for extra clarity & context
The ability to edit & do calculations referencing previous calculations

We succeeded in these goals by placing an "answer column" alongside a notepad, inventing a new kind of notepad calculator in the process.

Adding multi-word variables (inspired by programming languages) & line references (inspired by spreadsheets) opened up lots of additional workflows too.

What are the current design goals for Soulver?

Since 2005, we have constantly been improving Soulver year-after-year, while ensuring it never becomes bloated or complicated.

For the last decade we've been focusing on:

Ensuring best-in-class apps on each Apple platform we support (by using native technologies, and integrating deeply with the operating system)
Adding more natural language features to "take a load off your brain" when working through problems involving a calculation
More ways to personalize your calculation environment (global variables, custom units, tons of visual options, etc)

Soulver is a natural language calculator. Is it using machine learning (AI) to achieve this?

Actually, no. Soulver does not use machine learning algorithms, or even regular expressions.

Soulver is powered by our natural language calculation engine SoulverCore.

SoulverCore scans text for particular syntaxes and evaluates the last valid mathematical expression it finds on a line of text.

If you're curious about how we built SoulverCore, check out the wonderful book Crafting Interpreters by Robert Nystrom.

Was Soulver the first notepad calculator?

Soulver (originally released in 2005) was the first notepad calculator to use an answer column on the right side of a text editor with instant calculation.

Soulver 1.2 (released in 2006) was the first notepad calculator that let you use words alongside numbers. And Soulver 2 (released in 2010) was the first notepad calculator to support live currency & stock rates, natural language functions & tokenizing line references.

The first notepad + calculator tool that we know of is MathPad by Mark Widholm released for Macintosh in 1993.

Calca is a modern app inspired by the MathPad design, in that it prioritizes comments over math, and requires you manually insert a special symbol (=>) to invoke calculation.

We prefer Soulver's approach, in which your expression is evaluated as soon as you type it (no explicit calculation step required).

List of Soulver Clones

Native Windows

OpalCalc

Electron-based (compatible with Windows, Linux & Mac)

Web-based

If you make a calculator product inspired by Soulver, please consider writing an acknowledgment of Soulver as the source of the idea (somewhere on your website, or in your application credits). Everyone benefits when great UI concepts are copied, evolved upon, and widely used.

Last updated 17 days ago