Students have a specific version of this problem: the work is self-directed, the deadline is months away, and nobody notices if you do nothing on a Tuesday.
A study timer helps with the last part. It makes the Tuesday visible.
Below are eight, ranked for student use. I run Peazehub, which is first. Every limitation below, including ours, is stated plainly.
The comparison
| App | Best for | Cost | Platforms |
|---|---|---|---|
| Peazehub | Streaks, stats and study groups | $29.99 once | Web (PWA) |
| YPT | Subject-level exam tracking | Free | iOS, Android |
| Forest | Putting the phone down | ~$4 once | iOS, Android |
| Study Bunny | School-age students | Free with ads | iOS, Android |
| Study Together | Free live study rooms | Free | Discord |
| Pomofocus | A plain timer, no account | Free | Web |
| Focus To-Do | Tasks alongside study | $11.99 lifetime | All platforms |
| Focusmate | Scheduled accountability | $288 / 3 years | Web |
What actually matters for students
Ignore the feature lists for a moment. Three things determine whether a study timer survives past week two:
- Can you see the gaps? A heatmap or a per-subject log turns "I think I studied a fair amount" into a number. Revision fails on distribution, not effort — most students do the hours, bunched into the wrong week.
- Does a bad day break everything? A streak that requires two hours a day is a streak you will lose in the first bad week and never restart.
- Is anyone else watching? Solo study collapses quietly. Groups, rooms or leaderboards make the collapse visible before it is a month old.
Price matters too, but the one-time options stay cheap: Forest about $4, Focus To-Do $11.99, Peazehub $29.99, against $288 for three years of Focusmate.
1. Peazehub — best for streaks, stats and study groups
$29.99 one-time · Web, installable on phone
Nine presets, and every completed session writes to a streak, a lifetime hours total, a heatmap and the weekly leaderboard. Study groups let three to twenty people share an hours goal, asynchronously — nobody has to be online at the same time. It is the only app on this list with all three of the things that matter for students above, on desktop and phone, without a subscription.
The streak counts days rather than hours, deliberately. One ten-minute session keeps it alive, which is what stops a bad week from ending the habit.
Falls short on: no blocker. Native iOS and Android apps are in development and are covered by the same $29.99 you already paid.
2. YPT (Yeolpumta) — best free option for exam candidates
Free · iOS, Android
Per-subject timers, live study rooms, and rankings, all free. Useful if you need to know that you have done 40 hours of organic chemistry and 6 of statistics.
Falls short on: mobile only, no web or desktop version, and a dense interface. There is no shared group goal; rooms are mostly strangers.
3. Forest — best for phone distraction
~$4 one-time · iOS, Android
If the honest description of your problem is that you pick up your phone every four minutes, fix that first. Forest is the cheapest effective fix on this list.
Falls short on: it will not tell you where your term went.
4. Study Bunny — best for school-age students
Free with ads · iOS, Android
Coins, a pet rabbit, flashcards and a study log. It knows its audience and it works with them.
Falls short on: heavy ads, and tracking that does not go deep enough for university-level planning.
5. Study Together — best free live study rooms
Free · Discord
Over a million members, live rooms with camera or screenshare. The lowest-friction way to study alongside other people at no cost.
Falls short on: no tracking whatsoever. Pair it with a timer that records.
6. Pomofocus — best plain browser timer
Free · Web
No account, no install. Open a tab and start. Sometimes correct.
Falls short on: no history, no streaks, no groups.
7. Focus To-Do — best if you need tasks too
$11.99 lifetime · every platform
Assignments and timer in one app across every device, with a lifetime tier rather than a subscription.
Falls short on: the study-community side is thin.
8. Focusmate — best scheduled accountability
From $8/month billed yearly · Web
Booked video sessions with a stranger. It works, and for some people the booked commitment is the only thing that works.
Falls short on: $288 over three years is a real expense on a student budget, and the free tier is three sessions a week.
A note on cost, since you are a student
Six of the eight apps here are free or a single payment you make once. Only two are subscriptions, and one of those — Focusmate — has a genuine ongoing cost behind it because real people are on the other end of the call.
Be sceptical of anything else that wants a monthly payment for a countdown timer. A degree takes three or four years; a subscription priced at $8/month costs more over that period than most of your textbooks, for software that counts down from 25.
We charge $29.99 once for exactly that reason — one payment, no renewals, and the price is locked for anyone who buys before it rises to $49.99 on 1 October.
How to choose
- Need to see whether the habit is holding, with a group → Peazehub
- Need per-subject tracking and only ever study on a phone → YPT
- Need the phone locked → Forest, alongside Peazehub
- Need a live room right now → Study Together, alongside Peazehub
Peazehub is $29.99 once with a 30-day refund window. The timer runs free without an account, so trying it costs nothing.
Want to try it before you sign in? The free aesthetic pomodoro timer runs the same presets in your browser with a calm background and no account.
