Comparison

Thrive at UT vs Equa

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Thrive at UT

This app supports University of Texas students in navigating campus life. It offers guidance on friendships, mindfulness, and challenges through videos and interactive activities. The goal is to help students make positive changes for a better daily experience.

Highlights
  • Campus life navigation
  • Friendship building guidance
  • Mindfulness techniques
  • Challenge management
  • Student video stories
  • Interactive learning activities
Features
Read full description

Specifically designed for students throughout the University of Texas system, Thrive at UT helps you live your best life. Eight topic areas including building friendships, becoming more mindful, and managing challenges help you better navigate the ups and downs of campus life. There are short videos of students sharing their own stories as well as interactive activities to help you learn more about yourself. Thrive helps you make small, simple changes that can have a powerful impact on your daily life!

About

Equa

This app offers a personalized mindfulness training experience with interactive feedback to build attentional control, mental resilience, and overall well-being. It addresses common challenges faced by new meditators by providing guidance and support throughout the practice.

Highlights
  • Attentional control training
  • Mental resilience building
  • Personalized mindfulness coaching
  • Interactive feedback system
  • Well-being improvement
  • Guided meditation practice
Features
Read full description

You’ve meditated before. Did it work? Be honest…you don’t actually know. Equa does. Equa is a meditation app that turns your practice into something you can measure. Using only the motion sensors in your phone, Equa tracks your breathing while you meditate and turns it into feedback on what actually changed during the session. No watch, no ring, and no headband needed. Using your respiration data, you can now see how your practice went, and watch your meditation skills develop over days and weeks – so you can tell whether it’s working instead of guessing. If you are new to Equa, you can try the app for free. After the trial, choose your own price on our sliding scale, or become an Equanaut and make Equa possible for someone else! Equa needs no additional hardware. Simply rest your phone on your chest and let the sensors inside do the work. How it works: Meditation Insights Equa reads your breathing from your phone’s accelerometer during a session and shows you what changed. You get your breath rate in breaths per minute, how it shifted from the start of the session to the end, and where that sits relative to your own baseline. The respiration algorithm was developed with researchers at Carnegie Mellon University. Breath Rate Breath rate is one of the clearest physical signals that a session is doing something, and Equa tracks it every time you sit. Trends Single sessions vary. Practice shows up over weeks. Equa charts your breath rate and session history over time so you can see your progress over time. Science We didn’t just make this up. Equa’s Chief Science Officer, Dr. David Creswell, runs the Health and Human Performance Lab at Carnegie Mellon University, where he’s spent two decades studying how mindfulness training actually changes the body’s biological stress outcomes. One study found mindfulness training reliably lowered cortisol and blood pressure under stress. But participants didn’t report feeling less stressed – they just were. “How do you feel” was never going to catch that. So we built something that does. Training & Curriculum: Equa treats meditation the way a training program treats a physical capacity. Sessions ask you to stay with discomfort rather than escape it, because that is where stress resilience is built. The curriculum offers a structured path through Unified Mindfulness’s core skills: Concentration Power, Sensory Clarity, and Equanimity. Equa offers a science-backed framework for mindfulness training. What else you can do in the Equa app: Review any past session and its breathing data Set practice reminders that fit your schedule Follow guided sessions for stress, focus, and attention Track and build on your practice Equa provides products and services designed for general wellness and education purposes. Equa is not a medical device, is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, and should not be used as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Breath rate measurement provides feedback on your meditation practice and is not a diagnostic tool.  After this, Equa offers two auto-renewing subscription options: Play what you want slider Price - Varying This subscription is for six months and auto-renews after six months. - Title of auto-renewing subscription: Pay as you go. - Length of subscription: 1 month - Price of subscription: Varying - Privacy policy can be found here https://equahealth.io/privacy-policy. - Terms of Use (EULA) can be found here https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula. Year Subscription This subscription is for 12 months and auto-renews after 12 months. - Title: Annual Membership - Length of subscription: 1 year - Privacy policy can be found here https://equahealth.io/privacy-policy. - Terms of Use (EULA) can be found here https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula.

Screenshots

Thrive at UT4 screens
Equa4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Thrive at UT at none against Equa's 12. Thrive at UT also leads on review sentiment (100% vs 69%) and iOS requirement (11.0 vs 15.1). Equa's advantage is update cadence (every 10 days vs every 6 months) and rating (4.9 vs 4.5). On price, ads and device support there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Equa sells 12 in-app purchases, starting at $0.99 per month. Thrive at UT asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

Equa holds the better App Store score, 4.9 against 4.5. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Equa has 240 ratings behind it against 12, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 100% of Thrive at UT's written reviews are positive against 69% of Equa's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Thrive at UT ships an update every 6 months, Equa every 10 days. The most recent releases landed on October 7, 2026 and October 14, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard7 real differences · 3 level
Thrive at UT versus Equa: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterThrive at UTEqua
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.5 (12 ratings)4.9 (240 ratings) — better
Positive reviews100.0% of reviews — better69.0% of reviews
Number of ratings12240 — better
Update frequencyEvery 6 monthsEvery 10 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
MonetizationFree — betterSubscription
DevicesiPhone, iPodiPhone, iPad, iPod — better
Requires iOS11.0 — better15.1
Further details — not scored
Size17 MB95 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperTHE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTINEqua Health, Inc.

Customer experience

Thrive at UT

All ratings12 ratings
Positive91.7%
Neutral0.0%
Negative8.3%
Written reviews8 reviews
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

Equa

All ratings240 ratings
Positive97.9%
Neutral0.8%
Negative1.3%
Written reviews29 reviews
Positive69.0%
Neutral10.3%
Negative20.7%

Bugs and requests

Thrive at UT

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

Equa

Reported bugs

6 issues
  • Login page not working
  • Tapping feedback not detecting double taps
  • Accomplishments not logging accurately
  • Cannot proceed past lesson 13 as a premium subscriber
  • App redirects to subscribe screen for premium content
Show 1 more
  • No way to reset user's meditation experience level

Requested features

8 requests
  • Add more content/lessons
  • Sync with Apple Health
  • Improve tapping detection accuracy
  • Provide more guidance on dashboard usage
  • Offer more than one reminder for micro-exercises
Show 3 more
  • Add ability to reset profile/experience level
  • Clarify course structure/outline
  • Add more lessons beyond the initial 41

In-app purchases

None

Thrive at UT

No in-app purchases

12 purchases

Equa

Subscriptions12
  • Monthly Subscription7 Days trial$0.991 Month
  • Monthly Subscriptoin7 Days trial$2.991 Month
  • Monthly Subscription7 Days trial$4.991 Month
Show 9 more
  • Monthly Subscriptoin7 Days trial$7.991 Month
  • Monthly Subscription1 Month trial$11.991 Month
  • Monthly Subscription7 Days trial$12.991 Month
  • Monthly Subscription7 Days trial$14.991 Month
  • Monthly Subscription7 Days trial$17.991 Month
  • Resilience Starter Kit7 Days trial$29.996 Months
  • Yearly Subscription1 Year trial$39.991 Year
  • Annual Membership7 Days trial$64.991 Year
  • Yearly Equanaut7 Days trial$149.991 Year

Questions

Is Thrive at UT free?
Thrive at UT is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Equa free?
Equa is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, Thrive at UT or Equa?
Equa is rated higher. Thrive at UT averages 4.5 out of 5 from 12 ratings, while Equa averages 4.9 from 240 ratings.
Do Thrive at UT or Equa have ads?
Neither Thrive at UT nor Equa shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Thrive at UT or Equa?
Thrive at UT ships an update every 6 months, and Equa every 10 days. Most recently, Thrive at UT was updated on October 7, 2026 and Equa on October 14, 2026.

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