A free alternative to Roots
At $9.99 a month, Roots is the most expensive monthly subscription of the app blockers on this site, and it runs on iPhone only. What you are paying for is a genuinely original idea. Whether you need it is the question.
| Roots | Otto | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free tier, then $9.99/mo or $59.99/yr | Free, all of it |
| Android | No, waitlist only | Yes |
| Free tier limit | 2 blocks | No limit, there is no paid tier |
| Limit by minutes | Yes | Yes |
| Limit by number of opens | Yes | No |
| Scheduled hard block | Yes | Yes |
| Greyscale | No | Yes |
| Usage data leaves your phone | Yes | No |
Where Roots is the better buy
Roots limits you by how many times you open an app, not just how many minutes you spend in it, and it wraps that in a Balance Score that tries to measure the compulsive quality of your use rather than the quantity. If you are the sort of person who opens Instagram forty times for nine seconds each, that is a better model of your problem than a timer is, and Otto does not do it.
Where Otto is the better fit
Otto counts minutes. If minutes are your problem, you do not need a behavioural score, an iPhone-only app or $59.99 a year to fix it.
Otto is free, on both stores
No paid tier, no trial that expires, no account. There is a tip jar in the settings and that is the whole business model.
