5Strands vs Lofty
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
5Strands
Track your food intake, environmental exposures, and symptoms to identify patterns and make informed lifestyle changes. Features include food scanning, easy logging, access to test results, and curated recipes to help you avoid intolerances.
- Scan food ingredients
- Log meals, surroundings, and symptoms
- Access and filter test results
- Discover intolerance-friendly recipes
- Track personal wellness score
- Connect with a supportive community
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The 5Strands app helps you track the foods you eat, the environmental factors you're exposed to, and your symptoms so you can identify patterns and make the lifestyle changes needed to feel more at home in your body. Stop second-guessing and give yourself the tools to make more confident choices every day. --APP FEATURES-- Scan Your Food: Use the built-in scanner to instantly check ingredients at home or on-the-go. Easy Calendar Tracking: Log your daily meals, surroundings, and symptoms so you can recognize patterns over time. Access Your Test Results Anytime: Filter your results by severity level to make smarter food and environmental choices anywhere. Find New Recipes: Browse curated recipes that help you avoid your food intolerances. Upgrade Your Test Results: Purchase digital upgrades to expand your results beyond food intolerances and environmental sensitivities without sending a new hair sample. Personal Wellness Score: Scoring is based on your results, so you can track your progress over time. Access New At-Home Tests: Explore more tests to further refine your daily diet and lifestyle choices. Gain Community Insights: Connect with others, ask questions, and share your own experiences. You're not just tracking. You're actively learning what works for your unique body. Download the 5Strands app and make meaningful lifestyle changes today!
Lofty
Explore meaningful questions to foster self-reflection and mindfulness. Engage with prompts through silent meditation or guided narration, and journal your insights. Personalize your experience with custom questions and reminders.
- Daily thoughtful questions
- Guided meditation sessions
- Personalized journaling
- Custom question creation
- Local reminders
- Home and Lock Screen widgets
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What if a better question could help shape what you notice? Affirmations tell you what to believe. Lofty gives your attention something meaningful to explore. Move through beautiful, expansive questions. Sit with them in silence or hear them read by a calming narrator. Save the ones that stay with you, then capture the moments, choices, support, and possibilities you begin to notice. ASK, THEN NOTICE Swipe through thoughtful questions across growth, confidence, gratitude, creativity, love, abundance, resilience, and possibility. Give a question a thumbs up or down, save favorites, and return to recent prompts whenever you need them. MEDITATE WITH A QUESTION Choose a session from 1 to 30 minutes, select a category and visual theme, then let each question settle before the next appears. Practice silently or choose from three distinct guided voices. KEEP THE EVIDENCE Use your evidence journal to record moments that connect with the questions you are exploring. Your writing stays on your device. MAKE THE PRACTICE YOURS • Browse and search by category • Choose visual themes that fit the moment • Create your own questions with Lofty Premium • Schedule gentle local reminders • Add questions to your Home Screen and Lock Screen with widgets • Share beautiful question artwork through the iOS share sheet START FREE. GO DEEPER WITH PREMIUM. The essential daily question practice is free. Lofty Premium adds guided narration, custom questions, focused categories, premium visual themes, and multiple reminder schedules. Premium is offered as a yearly subscription. Any introductory and renewal prices are shown by the App Store before purchase. PRIVATE BY DESIGN No account is required. Your custom questions, favorites, settings, and evidence-journal entries are stored locally. Lofty does not sell personal information or show ads. Optional creator attribution uses device and purchase information only with your tracking permission; declining does not limit app features. Optional product analytics use a device-linked identifier and can be turned off. Lofty supports personal reflection. It is not medical, mental-health, financial, legal, or other professional advice. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: Lofty at 5.0 against 5Strands's 4.5. Lofty also leads on review sentiment (100% vs 82%) and update cadence (every 3 days vs weekly). 5Strands's advantage is ratings volume (210 vs 1) and iOS requirement (15.1 vs 17.0). On price, ads, in-app purchases and monetization model 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
Both are free to download. 5Strands sells 1 in-app purchase, starting at $4.99 per month and Lofty sells 1 in-app purchase, starting at $19.99 per year. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
Lofty holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.5. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: 5Strands has 210 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 82% of 5Strands's written reviews are positive against 100% of Lofty's.
5Strands ships an update weekly, Lofty every 3 days. The most recent releases landed on October 29, 2026 and October 2, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | 5Strands | Lofty |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.5 (210 ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 81.5% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 210 — better | 1 |
| Update frequency | Weekly | Every 3 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Freemium |
| Devices | iPhone, iPod — better | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 15.1 — better | 17.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 80 MB | 75 MB |
| Age rating | 12+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Affordable Allergy Test, LLC | FINdustries |
Customer experience
5Strands
Lofty
Bugs and requests
5Strands
Reported bugs
4 issues- App crashes when making journal entry
- App not working after update
- Cannot sign in after update
- Login screen issue (not going past email screen)
Requested features
2 requests- Ability to scan barcodes of foods
- More detailed view of all tested items, not just categories
Lofty
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
5Strands
- 5Strands VIP$4.991 Month
Lofty
- Lofty Premium1 Year trial$19.991 Year









