Comparison

Retro vs Ebb

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

Head to head
About

Retro

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Retro๋Š” ๊ฐ์ • ๊ธฐ๋ก์ด ๊ฐ€๋Šฅํ•œ ์บ˜๋ฆฐ๋” ๊ธฐ๋ฐ˜์˜ ํˆฌ๋‘ ๋ฆฌ์ŠคํŠธ ์•ฑ ์ž…๋‹ˆ๋‹ค. ํ•˜๋ฃจ์˜ ์ƒ์‚ฐ์„ฑ์— ๋Œ€ํ•œ ํšŒ๊ณ ๋ฅผ ๊ฐ์ • ์Šคํ‹ฐ์ปค๋กœ ๋‚จ๊ฒจ ์ผ์ƒ์„ ๋”์šฑ ์ƒ์‚ฐ์ ์ด๊ฒŒ ์ง€๋‚ด๋ณด์„ธ์š”. # ๊ธฐ๋Šฅ Retro๋Š” ๋ ˆํŠธ๋กœ ๋А๋‚Œ์„ ์‚ด๋ฆฐ ์‹ฌํ”Œํ•˜์ง€๋งŒ ์ •๊ฐˆํ•œ ๋””์ž์ธ์„ ์ ์šฉํ–ˆ์Šต๋‹ˆ๋‹ค. ์บ˜๋ฆฐ๋” ๊ธฐ๋ฐ˜์˜ ํˆฌ๋‘ ๋ฆฌ์ŠคํŠธ๋Š” ํ•  ์ผ์„ ๋ณด๋‹ค ์ •๋ฆฌํ•˜๊ธฐ ํŽธ๋ฆฌํ•˜๊ฒŒ ํ•ด์ฃผ๊ณ , ๊ฐ์ • ์Šคํ‹ฐ์ปค๋กœ ๋‚จ๊ธฐ๋Š” ํ•˜๋ฃจ์˜ ์ƒ์‚ฐ์„ฑ์— ๋Œ€ํ•œ ํšŒ๊ณ ๋Š” ๋™๊ธฐ๋ถ€์—ฌ๋ฅผ ํ•ด์ค๋‹ˆ๋‹ค. # ํ”ผ๋“œ๋ฐฑ ์•ฑ ์ด๋ฆ„์ธ Retro๋Š” ๋ ˆํŠธ๋กœ(retro) ๋А๋‚Œ์„ ์‚ด๋ฆฐ ์ƒ์‚ฐ์„ฑ์„ ํšŒ๊ณ (retrospect)ํ•˜๋Š” ์•ฑ์ด๋ผ๋Š” ์˜๋ฏธ์—์„œ ์ค‘์˜์ ์œผ๋กœ ์ง€์–ด์กŒ์Šต๋‹ˆ๋‹ค. ์•ฑ์ด ๋งŒ์กฑ์Šค๋Ÿฝ๋‹ค๋ฉด ์•ฑ์Šคํ† ์–ด ๋ฆฌ๋ทฐ์— ํ”ผ๋“œ๋ฐฑ์„ ๋‚จ๊ฒจ์ฃผ์„ธ์š”. ๊ธ์ •์ ์ธ ๋ฆฌ๋ทฐ๋Š” ์„œ๋น„์Šค ์šด์˜์— ํฐ ํž˜์ด ๋ฉ๋‹ˆ๋‹ค!

About

Ebb

Features
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Ebb is a quiet journal for the urge to buy. When the impulse to purchase something rises โ€” before you buy, or right after โ€” you take ten seconds to note it: what you wanted, how strong the pull was, how you felt, and what you were doing when it hit. Then you choose what happened: you bought it, you saved it for later, or you let it pass. That's it. Ebb isn't here to scold you or tell you to stop spending. It's here to help you SEE โ€” to turn a fuzzy, repeating feeling into something you can actually look at. WHAT YOU GET โ€ข Flow โ€” a calm timeline of every urge you've logged. โ€ข Patterns โ€” the moods and situations that most spark the urge, how strong it runs when you buy versus when you pass, and a running total of the money you let go by not buying. โ€ข Across your devices โ€” your journal syncs through iCloud, so it's there on your iPhone and iPad, and comes back if you reinstall. โ€ข A gentle reflection loop โ€” when you record something you bought, Ebb can remind you once, three days later, to look back: "How's that thing now?" The hindsight is where the learning is. PRIVATE BY DESIGN โ€ข No account, no sign-up, no servers of ours. โ€ข iCloud sync, kept private โ€” your entries sync through your own private iCloud account, which only you can access. We have no server and never see your data. โ€ข Works offline โ€” entries save on your device right away and sync once you're back online. โ€ข Nothing is shared with anyone unless you tap Share yourself. โ€ข No ads, no tracking, no analytics. A FEW THINGS EBB IS NOT Ebb is a self-observation journal, not a medical or financial-advice tool. It doesn't diagnose anything or tell you what to buy. It just gives you a clear, judgment-free mirror โ€” and people tend to make calmer choices when they can see their own pattern. Available in English and Korean (follows your device language).

Screenshots

Retro4 screens
Ebb4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is update cadence: Ebb at daily against Retro's every 4 days. Ebb also leads on iOS requirement (13.0 vs 17.0). On price, ads, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.

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

CostPrice ยท In-app purchases ยท Ads ยท Monetization

Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Retro ships an update every 4 days, Ebb daily. The most recent releases landed on November 7, 2026 and October 25, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard2 real differences ยท 4 level
Retro versus Ebb: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterRetroEbb
PriceFreeFree
Update frequencyEvery 4 daysDaily โ€” better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
DevicesiPhone, iPad, MaciPhone, iPad, iPod
Requires iOS17.013.0 โ€” better
Further details โ€” not scored
Size5 MB4 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperHohyeon MoonDongChan Won

In-app purchases

None

Retro

No in-app purchases

None

Ebb

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Retro free?
Retro is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Ebb free?
Ebb is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do Retro or Ebb have ads?
Neither Retro nor Ebb shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Retro or Ebb?
Retro ships an update every 4 days, and Ebb daily. Most recently, Retro was updated on November 7, 2026 and Ebb on October 25, 2026.

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