Focus & Productivity

Best Focus Apps in 2026: Blockers, Timers and Body-Doubling, Priced

Freedom, Cold Turkey, Forest, Focusmate and more: what each focus app blocks, what it costs and who it suits. Desktop and phone options, every price dated.

By Engineer Foodie Desk Oct 18, 2026 ✓ Sources checked Oct 15, 2026

9 min read

Prices checked Oct 15, 2026 (Cold Turkey Pro price and website-blocking details checked Oct 17, 2026; Focusmate and Cold Turkey features checked Oct 18, 2026) on each vendor’s official site or app-store listing, linked under Sources. No affiliate links on this page (how we work).

You sit down for two hours of real work. Eleven minutes later you’re reading about a celebrity’s kitchen renovation, with no memory of opening the tab. “Just be more disciplined” has never once worked as a plan.

A focus app is a tool for protecting a work session. It’s different from a screen-time app, which caps your phone use across the day. Here are the best ones, what each actually costs, and who each one suits.

We haven’t tested these apps. Everything comes from each vendor’s own pages and the research we cite.

TL;DR: the best focus app by situation

Every device, one subscription: Freedom. Mac, Windows, iOS, Android and Chromebook, with a free tier.
Total desktop lockdown, pay once: Cold Turkey. Pro is $45 one-time, for Windows and macOS.
You work better with someone watching: Focusmate. Virtual body doubling, free for 3 sessions a week.
Free app blocking on phone and browser: Forest. Core focus features are free.
A pause, not a wall: one sec. Free for one app.
iPhone and Mac with no way out: Opal. Hard Mode on Pro.
You’ll cheat on yourself, and you’re on Android: a friend holds the key with FriendLock. Read the disclosure.

Focus apps compared

App	Type	Free tier	Price	Platforms	Source
Freedom	Blocker	Yes	$8.99/mo or $3.33/mo yearly	Mac, Win, iOS, Android, Chromebook	freedom.to
Cold Turkey	Blocker	Yes	$45 once (Pro)	Win, macOS	getcoldturkey.com
Focusmate	Body-doubling	3 sessions/week	$8/mo yearly, $12 monthly	Check site	focusmate.com
Forest	Focus + block	Yes	iOS: $5.99/mo, $35.99/yr	iOS, Android, browser	forestapp.cc
one sec	Pause	1 app	iOS: $6.99/mo, $19.99/yr	iOS, Android, browser	one-sec.app
Opal	Blocker	1 rule	$19.99/mo, $99.99/yr	iOS, Android, Mac	opalapp.com
FriendLock	Friend lock	Up to 3 apps	Check current price	Android	Google Play

Prices in USD. Forest and one sec iPhone prices are from their US App Store listings (Oct 15, 2026), because neither vendor publishes a USD price on its own site.

Freedom

Freedom blocks apps and websites across every device you own at once. Its site lists “Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, Chromebook”.

Free: $0. Block apps and sites, on unlimited devices.
Premium: $8.99 a month, or $3.33 a month on the yearly plan (“Save 40%”). Freedom’s site doesn’t print the yearly total, while its Google Play listing says “$39.99 per year for Freedom Premium”.
Forever: $99.50 one-time, shown as 50% off a $199 list price at the time of writing.

Premium adds scheduling and Locked Mode, which Freedom says “prevents you from quitting a session early”. There’s one limited early exit, and it “can only be used once every 7 days” (Freedom support, checked Oct 15, 2026).

Best for: distractions that jump between laptop and phone.

Cold Turkey

Cold Turkey calls itself “The Toughest Website & App Blocker on the Internet”. It can block specific websites, YouTube channels, apps and games, keyword searches, the entire internet, or your whole computer. You can set weekly schedules, allowances and passwords, and it has uninstall prevention. In its own words, it “makes it almost impossible to stop the block once you lock it. No, you can’t just uninstall it.” (getcoldturkey.com, checked Oct 18, 2026).

Free: yes.
Pro: $45 one-time (“pay once, own forever”), with a 7-day Pro trial, 20% off for students and a 30-day refund.
Platforms: desktop only, Windows and macOS.

Its “Pause for a Cause” option lets you pause a block by donating to the World Wildlife Fund, and you can switch that off.

Best for: laptop deep work with a lock you can’t talk your way out of.

Focusmate

Focusmate isn’t a blocker. It sells “virtual body doubling”, or as its homepage puts it, “Virtual coworking for getting anything done”. The idea is that you work in a session alongside another person, and their presence keeps you on task.

Free: 3 sessions a week, no credit card.
Plus: unlimited sessions, $8 a month billed annually or $12 a month billed monthly (“Taxes may be added at checkout”).
Business: contact sales.

Its pricing and home pages didn’t list platforms on Oct 18, 2026, so check before you sign up.

Best for: people who procrastinate alone but work fine with company.

Forest

Forest is a focus app for phone and browser. Its site says core focus is “Free for core focus — no credit card, no expiration”, and the free tier includes Deep Focus Mode (app blocking). Time Guard blocks one app or site on Free, and several on Plus. There’s a browser extension for Chrome and Firefox (forestapp.cc, checked Oct 15 and Oct 17, 2026).

On price, Forest’s own site says “Plus pricing varies by region and platform”. The US App Store listed Monthly (Early Bird) at $5.99 and Annual (Early Bird) at $35.99 or $32.49 on Oct 15, 2026.

Forest’s own site won’t tell you what Plus costs. It sends you to the app stores “for your current local price”. Telling people to go and find your price somewhere else isn’t transparency.

Source: forestapp.cc, checked Oct 15, 2026

Best for: people who want free app blocking on their phone, with a browser extension for the laptop.

one sec

one sec doesn’t block. It interrupts. When you open a target app, it makes you pause and breathe first, and you can choose to close the app. It also has a browser extension for websites (one-sec.app, checked Oct 17, 2026).

It’s free for one app. On the US App Store, one sec pro was $6.99 a month, $19.99 a year or $99.99 lifetime (Oct 15, 2026). Its own site lists euro prices and says prices differ by region.

There’s research behind the idea. A 2023 PNAS field study of one sec with 280 participants over six weeks found people closed the target app 36% of the times one sec interrupted, and opened target apps 57% less after six weeks (Grüning, Riedel & Lorenz-Spreen, 2023). One of the authors created one sec, which the paper discloses.

Best for: people who want a speed bump, not a locked door.

Opal

Opal is a screen-time blocker on iOS, Android and Mac, and its paid plan includes Hard Mode, which Opal describes as “No way out. You can’t turn Opal off.”

Free: $0, with 1 rule.
Pro: $19.99 a month, or $99.99 billed annually.
Lifetime: $399 one-time.

Students get “up to 50% off” Pro. Opal’s own help docs say website blocking is reliable in iOS Safari, and often not in other browsers (Opal help, checked Oct 17, 2026). If the price stings, see our Opal alternatives.

Best for: iPhone and Mac users who’ll pay for a strict mode.

FriendLock

Every blocker above has the same weak spot: you set the rules, so you can usually unset them. FriendLock moves the key to someone else. Its Google Play listing calls it “the focus app blocker you can’t switch off yourself”: a blocked app opens only when your friend approves the request or shares a 6-digit code, and the app locks again when the time runs out.

It can block just Reels, Shorts or Spotlight while the rest of Instagram, YouTube or Snapchat stays open, and it has a website blocker for Chrome, Samsung Internet, Firefox, Brave, Edge and Opera. Your partner gets a tamper alert if protection is turned off.

Free: blocks up to 3 apps and may show ads on in-app screens (never on the lock screen).
Pro: unlimited apps and no ads, with a 7-day free trial. The listing doesn’t publish a Pro price, so check current price in the app.
Platforms: Android only.

The listing is upfront about its limits: “FriendLock is a commitment device, not an unbreakable lock. On a normal Android phone the device owner can still bypass restrictions through system actions such as force-stop, Safe Mode, factory reset or ADB. FriendLock adds accountability and visibility, not absolute device control.” Find it on Google Play.

Disclosure: the team behind this site has a stake in FriendLock. (How we work)

Best for: Android users who know they’ll negotiate with themselves.

How to pick: blocker, timer or accountability?

Start with the way you usually fail.

You drift without noticing. A timer or a pause app (Forest, one sec) makes the drift visible. That’s often enough.

You notice, then do it anyway. You need a real blocker (Freedom, Cold Turkey, Opal). Hard-to-override limits have the best evidence of the bunch. In a large study of about 2,000 US Android users, limits that “in most cases could not be immediately overridden” cut time on the targeted apps by 22 minutes a day, or 16%, over 12 weeks (Allcott, Gentzkow & Song, working paper version; the final paper appears in the American Economic Review, 2022).

You switch the blocker off when it gets annoying. Then the lock can’t be yours to open. Pick Cold Turkey’s lock, Freedom’s Locked Mode, or a friend-held key like FriendLock.

You just can’t start. That’s a body-doubling problem, not a blocking problem. Try Focusmate’s free sessions.

Whatever you pick, plan the session first: when, how long, and what you’ll do when the urge hits. A meta-analysis of 94 tests found that simple if-then plans had a medium-to-large effect on reaching goals (Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006).

If your problem is the phone more than work sessions, see the best screen time app, the best app blocker for Android, or our guide on how to stop doomscrolling.

FAQ

What is the best free focus app? Freedom, Cold Turkey and Forest all have free tiers, Focusmate gives 3 free sessions a week, and FriendLock’s free plan blocks up to 3 apps on Android.

Do focus apps work? Hard-to-override limits cut targeted app use by 16% in a large 12-week study, but no app does the work for you.

What is the best focus app for Mac? Cold Turkey Pro ($45 one-time), Freedom and Opal all run on Mac, and Cold Turkey is the strictest by its own description.

What is the best focus app for Windows? Cold Turkey and Freedom both run on Windows, and Opal’s pricing page lists iOS, Android and Mac only.

Sources

Freedom Premium: https://freedom.to/premium (checked 2026-10-15)
Freedom on Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=to.freedom.android2 (checked 2026-10-15)
Freedom features and support: https://freedom.to/features and https://support.freedom.to/en/articles/1776713-ending-a-block-session (checked 2026-10-15)
Cold Turkey pricing: https://getcoldturkey.com/pricing/ (checked 2026-10-15) and Paddle price for product 598305 (checked 2026-10-17)
Cold Turkey features: https://getcoldturkey.com/ (checked 2026-10-18)
Focusmate pricing and home: https://www.focusmate.com/pricing and https://www.focusmate.com/ (checked 2026-10-18)
Forest: https://www.forestapp.cc/ (checked 2026-10-15 and 2026-10-17)
Forest on the US App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/forest-focus-for-productivity/id866450515 (checked 2026-10-15)
one sec: https://one-sec.app/ (checked 2026-10-17)
one sec on the US App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/one-sec-screen-time-focus/id1532875441 (checked 2026-10-15)
Opal pricing: https://opalapp.com/pricing (checked 2026-10-15) and Opal help: https://help.opalapp.com/article/why-isnt-blocking-working-correctly (checked 2026-10-17)
FriendLock on Google Play: https://link.sayne.design/friendlock (checked 2026-10-15)
Grüning, Riedel & Lorenz-Spreen (2023), PNAS: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2213114120
Allcott, Gentzkow & Song, Digital Addiction (NBER w28936; AER 2022): https://www.nber.org/papers/w28936
Gollwitzer & Sheeran (2006): https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(06)38002-1