Forest alternative

Forest is a focus timer: you plant a tree, it grows as long as you stay in the app, and it dies if you leave. Time Guard adds a schedule-based block on the side. If you’re here, the tree has probably stopped working on you, or the move to a subscription made you look around, and you want to know what Tempo does that Forest doesn’t, and the other way round.

What Forest does well

The tree is a genuinely good idea. It turns an abstract hour into something you can lose, and that’s enough to keep a lot of people in place without a password or a rule. Nothing is enforced; you just don’t want to kill it. The timer works offline, Deep Focus brings you back if you drift into another app, and the forest that piles up over the weeks is a record you can look at with some pride.

Around that core, Forest has built things Tempo simply doesn’t have. Chrome and Firefox extensions carry the tree to your computer. Plant Together gives a group a shared stake: if one person quits, everyone’s tree dies, which pulls harder than any notification. Coins buy tree species and sounds, and with Plus they fund real trees planted through Trees for the Future, more than two million so far. Focus Analytics and tags tell you where your hours went. It’s playful, and for a lot of people that’s the whole point.

Where Forest stops

Forest doesn’t block anything, and that’s by design. You can always let the tree die. It goes into your forest as a dead trunk, and that’s the entire cost. No wait, no strict mode, no password. On a bad evening that cost is zero, and on a second device it’s less than zero: the tree keeps growing on the phone while you scroll on the tablet.

The mechanism also wears out. Loss aversion is strongest when the loss is new; a common report is that by the second month Forest has become a timer app. Once the dead tree stops hurting, there’s nothing behind it.

Time Guard is the actual blocking feature, and it’s a schedule: apps or sites closed in time windows outside your sessions, one of them free, several with Plus. It answers a different question from the tree, and it lifts the way every schedule does, when the hour passes. On mobile, sites aren’t blocked outside a session at all.

Then there’s the split across platforms. iOS, Android and the extensions are separate purchases with separate accounts, and syncing your forest between them means a Forest account.

In December 2025 Forest moved to a free tier with ads and a Forest Plus subscription. Earlier Pro purchases are kept under a “Pro (discontinued)” label, and some features are now Plus-only. That change is what sends many people comparing; read the current listing before deciding what it means for you.

What Tempo does differently

Tempo is not a timer. It’s a permanent block whose exit has a physical price. The two don’t compete for the same hour, but they don’t pull on the same lever either.

• A block that holds, not a session you protect. The apps you choose stay blocked all day, every day. On iPhone the block goes through Apple’s own picker (apps, categories, and sites in Safari) and is enforced by iOS itself: it holds even with Tempo closed. On Android it’s a Tempo service with a permanent notification, apps only. Strict mode, in Tempo Pro, makes any loosening wait 24 hours while tightening is immediate; on iPhone it can remove the “Delete App” button from the Home Screen.
• The way out is to move. Screen minutes are earned only from activity: workouts read from Apple Health or Health Connect, credited with a per-sport rate (an hour of cycling and an hour of walking don’t pay the same), and steps as the fallback without a watch — a thousand steps is about ten minutes of walking, paid at walking’s rate. You pick the exchange rate at setup: ×1, ×2 or ×3. On iPhone with a watch, Tempo also reads intensity: when you push, the minute pays more than your rate, never less. Workouts typed into Health by hand don’t count. Credit lands without opening the app.
• One balance, drained by real use. Earned minutes open every blocked app at once; using them spends the balance minute by minute, following the system’s own Screen Time (43 minutes debited for 44 counted by iOS, measured on device). At zero, everything closes at once, without opening Tempo. Minutes expire after 24 hours, so there’s no stock for Sunday.
• No tree, no streak, no score. That’s a choice, not a gap. Tempo doesn’t try to motivate you; it works by exposure, by the balance you don’t have. What people report most often is that the minutes they earned don’t even get spent.
• No account, no server, no ads. Nothing leaves the device, there are no analytics, and the App Store listing carries the “Data Not Collected” label. The flip side: no sync between devices, and nothing on a computer.

Who Forest suits better

If what you want is to protect an hour of work you’ve chosen, Forest does that and Tempo doesn’t: Tempo has no timer and no session. The same goes for focusing with friends, for a tree on your computer through the extension, and for the game itself, the species, the coins, the real trees. If that pull still works on you, keep it. Forest also runs on iPad; Tempo is iPhone, Android and an Apple Watch companion, with nothing on a computer at all.

Tempo assumes that moving more is part of what you want. Without that, a block you can only open by exercising is just a wall.

Prices change on both sides, and this page won’t keep up with the listings: check the current grid on the App Store and on Play.

Frequently asked questions

Forest vs Tempo: which one actually blocks?

Forest doesn’t block during a session: the tree dies if you leave, and that’s all. Its blocking feature is Time Guard, a schedule that lifts when the hour passes. Tempo holds a permanent block, enforced by iOS itself on iPhone, whose only exit is a balance of minutes earned by moving; with strict mode, loosening any setting waits 24 hours.

Can I keep Forest if I switch to Tempo?

Yes. Tempo doesn’t touch your forest or your history, and a Forest session can run while Tempo blocks everything else. One piece of advice: don’t put the same apps under Time Guard and under Tempo. Two blockers on the same apps step on each other.

Is Tempo free?

Yes, and without ads: as many blocked apps as you want and up to 60 screen minutes a day to spend. Tempo Pro, monthly, yearly or as a lifetime purchase, sets that cap, fixes a per-sport rate, reads intensity on iPhone with a watch, and adds strict mode, the full journal and the widgets. If Pro expires, nothing is removed: your apps stay blocked and the 60-minute cap comes back. Current pricing is on the App Store and Play listings.