Every screen time app, ranked by how hard it is to cheat

You have three or four of these on a shortlist, you have already tried two of them, and the only thing you actually want to know is how long each one would have held you on the night you decided it was not going to.

Nobody publishes that number, because it is unflattering. Feature lists are easy: sessions, schedules, streaks, a tree. The floor is hard, and the floor is what you are buying. So here is one axis applied to everything on your shortlist, plus the method, so you can check it on your own phone in ten minutes.

The only number that matters is the floor, not the feature list

Define it precisely, because vagueness is how this gets sold. Time to defeat is the shortest wall clock gap between deciding you want the blocked app and having it open, using only the phone in your hand: no computer, no second device, no factory reset. You are not sneaking. You know the passcode, because you set it. You are a person at 11pm who has stopped agreeing with a decision you made on a Tuesday.

A blocker is not measured by what it does when you cooperate. It is measured by what it does when you stop.

Two things fall out of that immediately. Most friction apps score identically, because a pause you can wait out is a speed bump with good graphics. And almost every app on iPhone shares one defeat route that has nothing to do with its features: you delete the guard. Press, hold, Remove App, Delete. Roughly ten seconds, and unless an app has specifically closed that door, its real score is ten seconds whatever its settings screen promises.

How to time your own floor in about ten minutes

Do this before you pay for anything. It is the whole review, and a free tier is enough to run it.

1. Set the app up as strictly as it will go. Every toggle on, the longest session, the paid strict tier if you are in a trial. You are testing the ceiling, not the default.
2. Block the app you actually lose evenings to. Not a test app. The real one. The whole measurement depends on wanting in.
3. Wait until you genuinely want it. Late, tired, bored. Testing this at 10am with a coffee tells you nothing, because at 10am you are not the person the app is for.
4. Start a stopwatch and get in by any route you would actually use. Dismiss buttons, the web version, the widget, deleting the guard, deleting and reinstalling the target, changing the clock. All of it counts. It counted the last time too.
5. Write down the time and the route. The route matters more than the number, because the route is what the app either closed or left open on purpose.

There are five doors, and most apps only guard one

Run the test a few times and you stop seeing fourteen apps. You start seeing five doors.

The front door is the block screen itself. Apple's own App Limits offer One More Minute and Remind Me in 15 Minutes, and without a Screen Time passcode also Ignore Limit For Today, one tap and gone until tomorrow. Most third party friction has the same shape underneath: a breath, a count, a confirmation, then through.

The side door is the same content arriving without the app opening. A widget, a Spotlight result and a notification preview all show you content from a limited app, and none of them trips the limit. An App Limit also does not cover the website version of an app unless you add the domain in the Websites field inside that limit, which almost nobody does.

The back door is deleting the guard. Ten seconds, no password, no confirmation beyond the usual one.

The trapdoor is deleting the blocked app itself. An App Limit attaches to an app, so deleting it detaches the limit and reinstalling gives you a clean one. Close it at Settings > Screen Time > Content & Privacy Restrictions > iTunes & App Store Purchases > Deleting Apps > Don't Allow, whatever else you end up using.

The clock beats anything scheduled. There is no restriction on an ordinary unsupervised iPhone that locks General > Date & Time behind the Screen Time passcode, so a schedule based block is only as strong as your unwillingness to change what time it is.

The ranking

Grouped by floor, because the differences inside a group are smaller than the differences between them. Ratings are US App Store counts as of August 2026, included only to show that popularity and holding power are unrelated.

Hardware wins this axis outright, when the hardware is upstairs

Be honest about the top of the table. A physical key beats software here, because the defeat route is a walk and no amount of clever code makes a walk shorter than a walk. Brick and Unpluq both run on that principle, and if your real problem is the phone as an object in the room, buy one and stop reading. The catch is in their own pitch: the tile only works if the tile is not in your pocket, and the scheme collapses the first evening you carry it because you might need it. Unpluq adds a subscription on top of the hardware.

Who should not pick us, and I mean this

If Opal's Deep Focus is already holding you, stay on Opal. A blocker you have made a habit of beats a better blocker you have to learn. If your problem lives on a laptop, Cold Turkey is heavier than anything on iPhone can be, and this article is about the wrong device for you. If Forest works, the tree is enough, and nothing here is an argument against a thing that is working.

Come back when the floor is the problem, which is a specific feeling: you know exactly which two taps get you through, you take them most nights, and the app has become a small ritual you perform before doing the thing anyway.

What a day looks like as a floor

The question this axis raises is not how to build a taller wall. A total wall is impossible and a bad idea anyway. It is what getting in should cost, and Scrappy's answer is that the cost should be real, paid in advance, and never purchasable.

Treats are earned by walking, roughly 2,000 steps for one, and one treat buys five minutes. They are never sold and never will be, which is the part that matters, because a blocker selling more time is a shop. Resistance is set per app: negotiable takes the treat, firm makes you sit for ten seconds first, absolute means he will not take the treat at all. Three rules total, quiet hours, a daily limit and an open limit.

The back door is where the floor gets set. The removal lock closes the delete-and-reinstall loophole, and switching it off takes a day, deliberately longer than an urge lasts. That is the whole trick: not a wall, a delay calibrated to outlast the feeling that wanted it gone. Because being genuinely stuck is a failure and not a feature, there is an emergency pass, one a month, no scolding.

No account, no sign-up, no server of ours. The blocking is drawn by a sandboxed Apple extension that cannot phone home. The free tier is one whole uncrippled rule plus every safety rail; Pro is $19.99 a year with a 7 day trial, $4.99 a month, or $39.99 once. And yes, you can pet him.