FreeCBT vs Safety Plan
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
FreeCBT
This app provides a digital thought diary to practice Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). It helps users identify and challenge negative automatic thoughts, retrain their brains, and ultimately improve mood and behavior. It's an open-source tool for self-help and as a companion to traditional therapy.
- Thought diary
- Challenge automatic thoughts
- Identify cognitive distortions
- Train alternative thoughts
- Open source
- CBT self-help tool
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FreeCBT is an open source thought diary for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is the "gold standard" of psychotherapy and is widely considered to be one of the most effective, evidence backed treatments for depression, anxiety, and panic. If you go into just about any therapist or psychiatrist, CBT will likely be one of the first treatments they try. FreeCBT is a companion and self-help app for one of the most common formats of CBT. You may have heard it called "the three column technique" or "catch it, check it, change it." Your brain is really good at making you feel exactly what you're thinking. Often, we find ourselves thinking "automatic negative thoughts" that lead us to fume on something that may not be true. That can cause us to feel depressed or anxious. CBT helps you record "automatic thoughts," challenge them with cognitive distortions and then train your brain with an alternative thought. If you do it enough, you can change your thoughts, your moods and your behavior. FreeCBT, a fork of Quirk, is open source under the GPL. You can find the code on Github at: https://github.com/erosson/freecbt
Safety Plan
This app guides users through creating a personalized safety plan to manage suicidal thoughts and self-harm urges. It offers tools for crisis moments, mood tracking, and access to support resources for individuals and their loved ones.
- Step-by-step safety plan creation
- Shareable safety plans
- Crisis intervention tools
- Mood tracking
- Access to crisis support
- Informational resources
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Safety Plan is here to help you make a plan for dealing with thoughts of suicide and self-harm. The app will walk you through filling out the 6 steps of a safety plan, share your safety plan with your loved ones, and use your safety plan in a moment of crisis. The app also includes audio and interactive tools to help you calm down, information for you and your loved ones about safety plans and suicide, mood tracking, and ready access to crisis support. Safety Plan is a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs app, developed by the National Center for PTSD Dissemination and Training Division and the Office of Mental Health and Suicide Prevention.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: Safety Plan at 5.0 against FreeCBT's 4.7. Safety Plan also leads on iOS requirement (13.0 vs 15.1). FreeCBT's advantage is update cadence (every 9 months vs every 22 months) and ratings volume (170 vs 23). On price, review sentiment, ads and in-app purchases 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. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Safety Plan holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.7. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: FreeCBT has 170 ratings behind it against 23, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 96% of FreeCBT's written reviews are positive against 100% of Safety Plan's.
FreeCBT ships an update every 9 months, Safety Plan every 22 months. Both last shipped on November 3, 2026.
| Parameter | FreeCBT | Safety Plan |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.7 (170 ratings) | 5.0 (23 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 96.2% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 170 — better | 23 |
| Update frequency | Every 9 months — better | Every 22 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 15.1 | 13.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 35 MB | 90 MB |
| Age rating | 12+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Evan Rosson | US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) |
Customer experience
FreeCBT
Safety Plan
Bugs and requests
FreeCBT
Reported bugs
5 issues- Swiping from distortion page selects/deselects distortions unintentionally
- App update deleted all past user entries
- Keyboard covers answer input area on some screens
- Swipe navigation doesn't work properly on certain screens
- Inconsistent touch response during navigation
Requested features
12 requests- Dark mode option
- Analytics to track thoughts and patterns over time
- Export feature to share entries with therapist or notes app
- Cross-device synchronization
- Bottom navigation bar
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- Ability to tag or categorize thoughts by topic
- Filter and view thoughts by category
- Evidence section with for/against columns
- Worst case scenario section with probability assessment
- More detailed examples for alternative thought step
- Additional cognitive distortion options (jumping to conclusions)
- Better help documentation and explanations
Safety Plan
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
FreeCBT
No in-app purchases
Safety Plan
No in-app purchases









