Search for an app blocker and you'll find the same pattern everywhere: free to install, then $8 a month or $60 a year to actually block anything. The single most common complaint in the reviews of these apps isn't that they don't work. It's "why is this a subscription?"
That's a fair question, and it has a real answer. This page gives you the honest version, the actual three-year math, and the blockers you can pay for once. Disclosure up front: we make one of the apps mentioned at the bottom (Bedside). We'll flag it clearly rather than pretend to be neutral.
Three reasons, only one of which is about you:
The third reason is the one worth checking, because it's the only one that's about the product. So the useful question isn't "subscription or not?" — it's "does this app actually need a server?"
For a blocker that runs entirely on your phone — one that uses Apple's Screen Time framework or Android's accessibility service, keeps your rules locally, and has no account — the honest answer is usually no. There's nothing to pay for monthly. You're subscribing to a business model, not to infrastructure.
Sticker prices feel small. Multiply them by the length of a habit and they stop feeling small. List prices verified July 2026 — they change often, so check the store before you buy:
| App | Subscription | Over 3 years | Lifetime tier |
|---|---|---|---|
| Opal | $99.99 / year | ~$300 | $399 |
| Jomo | $29.99 / year | ~$90 | $99.99 |
| one sec | $19.99 / year | ~$60 | $99.99 |
| Forest | $3.99 once (iOS) | $3.99 | — |
| ScreenZen | Free | $0 | — |
This isn't an argument that the subscription apps are overpriced. Opal in particular does real work on the analytics side that costs real money to build. It's an argument that you should know which one you're signing up for — a tool you own, or a service you rent.
True, and worth being precise about, because it's the strongest counter to this whole page: Opal, Jomo and one sec all sell a buy-once tier. So the honest version of the argument isn't "you can't buy these outright." It's this:
The lifetime tiers are priced at three to five years of subscription, collected upfront. Buying out is possible; it just costs $99.99 to $399.
That's a real option and for a heavy user it can be the right one — if you'd otherwise pay Opal for four years, $399 is arithmetic, not a rip-off. But notice what it tells you: the buy-once price is set by what the subscription would have earned, not by what the software costs to run. Which brings you back to the same question — does this app have a server behind it, or are you paying four years upfront for a switch on your own phone?
Buy-once software has a genuine downside, and any page that doesn't mention it is selling you something: a one-time purchase funds development once. The app you buy today has no guaranteed budget for the OS update two years from now.
In practice, small buy-once tools survive on one of three things: a steady trickle of new buyers, ads on a free tier, or a developer who keeps it alive because they use it themselves. Worth knowing before you buy — the question to ask isn't "is it cheap", it's "will this still work on next year's OS".
Free, friction-based, with no premium tier and no in-app purchases at all — it runs on optional donations. Adds a pause and a "why are you opening this?" moment before the app loads. If free is the requirement, start here; it is the most honest answer on this page.
The gamified classic: plant a tree, don't touch your phone, watch it grow. A $3.99 one-time purchase on iOS; free on Android, where features unlock with coins earned from focus sessions. Excellent for deliberate daytime focus sessions, less suited to the 1 a.m. slide you never decided to start.
Generous free tier with scheduled blocking, paid upgrade optional. Long-standing option on Android.
This is our app, so treat this section as what it is. Bedside blocks the apps that keep you up during a sleep window you set, on iOS and Android. It's free with ads; a single $9.99 purchase removes the ads permanently and unlocks multiple block windows, multiple break rules, and a guardian password — a tenth of what the buy-once tiers above cost. No subscription, no account, no server of ours — your rules and usage logs stay on the device.
What it deliberately doesn't do: cross-device sync, cloud history, or an analytics dashboard. Those are the features that would require a server, and a server is what would require a subscription.
Pay a subscription when you're buying an ongoing service — sync, history, coaching, a shared dashboard. That's a fair trade.
Don't pay a subscription for a switch that runs on your own phone. If the app has no account and no cloud, a recurring bill is a business model choice, and you can usually find the same mechanism from someone who charges once.
Sleep first. Scroll tomorrow.
→ A fuller comparison of screen time apps
→ Looking specifically for an Opal alternative?