Bounce Back Now vs Safety Plan
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Bounce Back Now
This app offers private, self-paced emotional recovery tools for individuals and families impacted by trauma or stressful life events. It helps track well-being, provides coping strategies for stress, anxiety, and mood, and connects users to support resources.
- Emotional well-being assessment and tracking
- Understanding trauma symptoms
- Coping tools for stress, anxiety, and mood
- Mindfulness and relaxation techniques
- Sleep monitoring and improvement
- Parenting tips for young children
- Connection to crisis support helplines
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Bounce Back Now (BBN) is a free app to support the emotional recovery of individuals and families affected by a traumatic event, privately and at their own pace. Most content in the app is also highly relevant to people who have experienced other stressful life events. BBN was developed by healthcare professionals at the Medical University of South Carolina, Boston University, and University of Nebraska and was rigorously tested in research funded by the National Institute of Mental Health to provide an effective recovery tool for trauma survivors worldwide. Many people experience stress, anxiety, low mood, or sleep problems after a traumatic event, but don’t know where to turn for help. This app will help you track your emotional recovery and will provide you with coping tools to help you manage stress, anxiety, mood, and sleep problems based on best practice guidelines. If you want to talk to or text a disaster crisis counseling and support specialist via the Disaster Distress Helpline (which is administered by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration), the BBN app will help connect you to them. Download BBN today to support your and your family’s recovery after a traumatic event. What you will get: - Ability to assess your emotional well-being and track your recovery over time. - Gain an understanding of symptoms that commonly occur after a traumatic event. - Easy access to best-practice mobile tools that support emotional recovery and health across a range of domains, including stress, anxiety, depression, and sleep. - Effective coping tools that include relaxation skills, mindfulness, scheduling pleasurable activities, monitoring and improving sleep, writing about your experience, and tools to manage stress and anxiety. - Apply coping tools to improve mood and rate your experiences. - Coping tips for adults and helpful parenting tips for young children and adolescents. - Resources for additional help, such as Disaster Distress Helpline, American Red Cross, and National Institutes of Health, all in one place. - By practicing these skills over time, you may become less distressed and more quickly able to return to your daily activities. This mobile app is intended for information, education, and self-help purposes only. It is not a substitute for medical advice from a doctor or health care provider. Use of this application does not establish a doctor-patient relationship between you and the Medical University of South Carolina, Boston University School of Public Health, University of Nebraska, the National Institutes of Health, or any affiliated institutions. Persons using this application assume full responsibility for the use of this application and agree that the Medical University of South Carolina, Boston University School of Public Health, University of Nebraska, or any affiliated institutions are not responsible or liable for any claims, losses, or harms arising from use of the application. If you have any questions about the app, please contact the BBN Team at bbn@musc.edu or visit bouncebacknow.org.
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 update cadence: Bounce Back Now at fortnightly against Safety Plan's every 22 months. Safety Plan's advantage is ratings volume (23 vs 4) and iOS requirement (13.0 vs 15.0). On price, rating, review sentiment and ads 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.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 5.0 for Bounce Back Now against 5.0 for Safety Plan. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Safety Plan has 23 ratings behind it against 4, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews split almost evenly too, at 100% and 100% positive.
Bounce Back Now ships an update fortnightly, Safety Plan every 22 months. The most recent releases landed on October 20, 2026 and October 28, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Bounce Back Now | Safety Plan |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (4 ratings) — better | 5.0 (23 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 4 | 23 — better |
| Update frequency | Fortnightly — better | Every 22 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 15.0 | 13.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 52 MB | 90 MB |
| Age rating | 12+ | 4+ |
| Developer | The Medical University of South Carolina | US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) |
Customer experience
Bounce Back Now
Safety Plan
In-app purchases
Bounce Back Now
No in-app purchases
Safety Plan
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Bounce Back Now free?
Is Safety Plan free?
Which has better reviews, Bounce Back Now or Safety Plan?
Do Bounce Back Now or Safety Plan have ads?
Which is updated more often, Bounce Back Now or Safety Plan?
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