Transferring Applications to a new Mac

There's normally no reason you would have to re-purchase an app. If purchased from the App Store, just download it from there. For other third-party apps, download them from their respective sites and enter your registration info.

Run the free Go64 application on your old Mac to determine which applications are still 32-bit. These will not work on a new Mac that requires 64-bit only applications.. That will include any older Adobe non-subscription products (CS?), and Microsoft's Office 2011 for Mac. Check with the respective vendors for the versions that are supported on Big Sur (macOS 11.*), as you may incur application update expenses anyway. Check with your printer/scanner driver vendors to ensure that they released drivers for those devices after Nov 2020, or they likely will not be supported on macOS Big Sur.

Documents created by 32-bit applications are unaffected by the 32/64-bit issue and with compatible applications on Big Sur, these documents remain openable.

When you power on the new Mac and the setup process begins, have your last Time Machine backup from the old Mac handy as eventually, you will be asked if you want to use Migration Assistant to Restore from that drive into your new Mac. Any application that is a 32-bit or incompatible application on that Time Machine backup will be marked with the disabled icon.

I always advise NOT to migrate applications to a new mac.

As dialabrain said any applications that you bought you can redownload from the App Store, or from the developer website, as the case may be.

When migrating you should elect to bring only the user accounts. All your documents, music, etc. will be there but not the old stuff that was using up drive space and could cause conflicts with the new OS.

You're welcome.

VikingOSX made some good points.

Usually, you can redownload it and then apply your license key. Some apps might require you to de-authorise the other computer.