Most focus timer roundups compare the same six features and skip the one that decides it: whether you are buying the app or renting it.
So this list includes a three-year cost column. It changes the ranking more than any feature does, and it is the column most roundups leave out.
Full disclosure: I run Peazehub, which is on this list. Two apps here beat us on price and I have said so. A roundup that only flatters its author is not worth reading.
The comparison
| App | Best for | Platforms | Pricing | 3-year cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Peazehub | Tracking + community, no subscription | Web (PWA) | $29.99 one-time | $29.99 |
| Forest | Phone distraction | iOS, Android, extension | One-time on iOS | ~$4 |
| Focus To-Do | Tasks + timer in one | All platforms | $11.99 lifetime | $11.99 |
| Pomofocus | A timer in a browser tab | Web | Free tier | $0 |
| YPT | Subject-level exam tracking | iOS, Android | Free | $0 |
| Study Bunny | Younger students | iOS, Android | Free with ads | $0 |
| Study Together | Free live body doubling | Discord | Free | $0 |
| TickTick | Tasks, calendar and timer | All platforms | $35.99/year | $107.97 |
| Habitica | Habit building as an RPG | iOS, Android, web | ~$48/year | $144 |
| Focusmate | Scheduled live coworking | Web | From $8/month yearly | $288 |
What you get for the money
Price only means something next to capability. So here is the same ten apps against the features that separate a timer from a study system:
| App | Presets | Streaks | Long-term stats | Group goals | Leaderboard | Tasks | Audio | Blocking | 3-year cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| **Peazehub** | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | **$29.99** |
| YPT | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | $0 |
| TickTick | Yes | Habits | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | No | $107.97 |
| Focus To-Do | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | No | $11.99 |
| Habitica | No | Yes | Yes | Party | Yes | Yes | No | No | $144 |
| Forest | Yes | Limited | Limited | No | Friends | No | Yes | Phone | ~$4 |
| Pomofocus | Yes | No | No | No | No | Yes | No | No | $0 |
| Study Bunny | Yes | Yes | Limited | No | No | Yes | No | No | $0 |
| Study Together | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | $0 |
| Focusmate | Yes | No | Limited | No | No | No | No | No | $288 |
Two apps in that table do all four of the things that make a timer into a study system — streaks, long-term stats, group goals and a leaderboard. They are YPT and Peazehub.
YPT does it for free and is the better pick if you live on your phone. It is mobile-only, though: no desktop, no web.
Peazehub does it for $29.99, once, and runs in any browser including a laptop. Which makes it the only cross-platform app here with the full set — every other paid app in the table has *fewer* of these capabilities, not more, and most of them cost more over three years. TickTick is three and a half times the price with no group goals and no leaderboard. Habitica is nearly five times the price with no timer. Focusmate is nearly ten times the price and does one thing.
That is the case in one line: no paid app here gives you more than Peazehub does, and every subscription in the table costs more over three years while doing less. The one app that matches it on features is free — and mobile-only.
The subscription problem
Look down that last column. The spread is from $0 to $288 for three years of what is, functionally, a countdown timer with a record attached.
This is the part worth thinking about before you pick. A focus habit is a multi-year project — that is the entire point of it. Which means you are not choosing an app for this month, you are choosing what you will be paying in 2029.
At the top of the table you pay once and never think about it again. At the bottom it is a recurring bill you have to justify to yourself every year, on a tool you use twenty-five minutes at a time.
Subscriptions make sense when the vendor carries an ongoing cost. Focusmate genuinely does — it runs a live matching network with real people on real video calls, and $8/month for unlimited scheduled sessions is defensible. Brain.fm licenses and generates audio. Those are real costs.
A timer that counts down from 25 and writes a row to a database is not one of them.
1. Peazehub — best for tracking and community without a subscription
$29.99 one-time · Web (installable PWA)
Nine timer presets from 25/5 up to 90/30, and everything you finish is recorded: a streak, a lifetime focus-hour total, a GitHub-style heatmap, and a place on the weekly leaderboard. Study groups add a shared hours goal across three to twenty people.
The design decision that matters: streaks count *days*, not hours. One completed ten-minute session keeps a streak alive, which is what makes it survivable on a bad day.
Where it falls short: web only today, and no website blocker. If you need your phone physically restrained, Forest or Freedom will serve you better. Native iOS and Android apps are in development and will be included in the same $29.99 — not sold as a separate purchase or an add-on subscription.
Cost over three years: $29.99, paid once.
2. Forest — best for phone distraction
One-time on iOS, free with IAP on Android
You plant a tree, it grows while you focus, and it dies if you leave the app. It is a blunt instrument and it works, particularly for people whose problem is picking the phone up rather than sitting down.
Forest is also the cheapest paid app here. A one-time purchase of about four dollars, and it has held that model for years while most of the category moved to subscriptions.
Where it falls short: the tracking is shallow. Forest tells you that you focused; it is not built to tell you where 200 hours went over a term.
3. Focus To-Do — best for tasks and timer in one app
$1.99/month, $9.99/year, or $11.99 lifetime · every platform
A genuine Pomodoro timer bolted to a genuine task manager, on every platform including Windows and macOS. The $11.99 lifetime tier deserves credit — it is the same pricing philosophy as ours, at a comparable price.
Where it falls short: the task manager is the main event. Streaks, community and long-run study analytics are thin.
4. Pomofocus — best minimal browser timer
Free tier · Web
Opens in a tab, counts down, has a task list. Nothing to install and nothing to sign up for. For a lot of people this is genuinely all that is required.
Where it falls short: no streaks, no groups, no meaningful long-term history on the free tier. Premium pricing is not published, which makes it hard to evaluate.
5. YPT (Yeolpumta) — best for serious exam candidates
Free · iOS, Android
Enormously popular with exam candidates in Korea and beyond, and the subject-level time tracking is better than almost anything else here. Live study rooms and rankings included, at no cost.
Where it falls short: mobile only, and the interface is dense enough to be a project in itself. No desktop or web version.
6. Study Bunny — best for younger students
Free with ads · iOS, Android
Focus time earns coins, coins feed and dress a rabbit. It is aimed squarely at school-age students and it lands well with that audience.
Where it falls short: the ads are heavy on the free tier, and the tracking does not go deep.
7. Study Together — best free live body doubling
Free · Discord
A very large Discord community with live study rooms over camera or screenshare. If you want body doubling at no cost with a big pool of people, this is the most direct route to it.
Where it falls short: it is a Discord server. There is no personal tracking, no streak, no stats — you get the presence and nothing else.
8. TickTick — best if you already live in a task manager
$35.99/year · every platform
A strong to-do app and calendar with a competent Pomodoro timer inside it. If you are already paying for TickTick, there is little reason to run a second timer alongside it.
Where it falls short: the timer is a feature of a to-do app, not the point of it. $107.97 over three years is a lot for a timer if the task manager is not what you came for.
9. Habitica — best for habit building as a game
~$48/year · iOS, Android, web
Your habits become a character, your friends become a party, and neglected tasks damage your health bar. For people who genuinely enjoy RPG mechanics, the pull is real.
Where it falls short: there is no real focus timer. Habitica records *that* you did a thing, not how long you focused, which makes it a companion to a timer rather than a replacement.
10. Focusmate — best for scheduled live coworking
Free for 3 sessions/week; Plus from $8/month billed yearly · Web
You book a slot, you get paired with a stranger, you both state a goal and work on camera for 25, 50 or 75 minutes. For people who need a commitment with another human attached, nothing else on this list replicates it.
Where it falls short: you have to book and show up on time, on camera. The free tier is three sessions a week, and $288 over three years is the highest cost here by a distance.
How to choose
- Phone is the problem → Forest
- Want a timer and nothing else → Pomofocus
- Want tasks and timer together → Focus To-Do
- Want subject-level exam tracking → YPT
- Want a scheduled human on a call → Focusmate
- Want tracking, streaks and a group without a subscription → Peazehub
The honest summary
If your problem is your phone, Forest solves it for four dollars and you can stop reading here.
If you are on mobile only and want everything else, YPT is free and excellent, and you should take it.
If your problem is that you cannot see whether the habit is holding — that the weeks blur and you genuinely do not know whether you did twelve hours or thirty — then you want something that records. That is the category we built for, and the reason we charge once rather than monthly is that a study habit takes years, and a tool for a multi-year habit should not bill you every month of it.
Try the timer, then decide. $29.99 once, 30-day refund window, and the price rises to $49.99 on 1 October.