Go Rocco is now free for dog owners

From version 7.4.9, every feature in Go Rocco is free for everyone. The Alpha Pack subscription is gone. The adverts are gone. There is nothing to buy and nothing to unlock.

What changed

If you were on the free plan, a lot just opened up:

• Unlimited GPS walk tracking. No more minutes-per-walk allowance.
• Unlimited pet profiles. Every dog in the house gets their own.
• The full health dashboard and digital pet passport, with vaccinations, weight, medications, allergies, vet appointments and reminders.
• Extended dog detection on walks. The live map now shows other Go Rocco dogs within 100 metres for everyone.
• Group chats, voice messages and safety zones.
• Ask Rocco. Everyone gets a generous daily allowance of questions.
• Lost-pet photo matching, which compares sightings against your dog's photos, is open to everyone. Creating a lost-pet alert has always been free; the screen now says so.
• The Apple Watch app.

And the adverts are gone entirely. Not "fewer adverts", not "adverts unless you pay". None.

Why we did it

Go Rocco only works if the dog owners on your street use it too. Every dog on the map makes the next walk a little safer, and every lost-dog alert reaches more people when more people have the app. A paywall in front of any of that made the whole thing weaker, which was the opposite of the point.

Any feature that helps keep a dog safe will always be free. We used to say that about the core. Now it's true of all of it.

Adverts were the other half of the old model, and they sat badly with everything else we say about privacy. An app that shows you the dogs nearby should not also be building a profile of you for someone else. So that went too.

How the lights stay on

We would rather be straight about this than mysterious. Go Rocco is paid for by the businesses side, not by dog owners:

• Go Rocco Business. A free platform for the walkers, groomers, sitters and trainers who look after your dog. The core is free with no limits; the Pro plan for the admin extras is £15 a month.
• A small introduction fee when Go Rocco introduces a new client to a provider. Their own clients are always 0%.
• A commission on the shop, where independent British makers sell direct.
• Promoted listings that venues and providers can choose to pay for.
• Optional lost-pet alert boosts. The alert is free and goes out to people nearby straight away; a boost only widens the reach.

That's the whole list. If it ever changes, we'll say so here first.

If you had Alpha Pack

Thank you, genuinely: you kept the lights on while we got here. Everything you paid for is now free for everyone, and anything already billed is handled by Apple or Google in the usual way. The details are in our Terms of Service.

What else is in 7.4.9

The same release added passkeys, so you can sign in with Face ID, Touch ID or your password manager; safer two-factor sign-in; lost-pet alerts that reach nearby owners; vet appointments with reminders; and dozens of fixes from a full click-through of the app.