MindMax vs Mindful Design
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
MindMax
This app transforms your learning goals into focused, interactive 5-minute sessions. It acts as a personal coach, adapting to your pace and knowledge to help you build skills, grow your career, and improve daily. Engage in conversations to explore any topic and retain information through smart reviews.
- 5-minute interactive learning sessions
- Personalized coaching
- Skill building and career growth
- Adaptive learning pace
- Offline playback
- Memory boosters and spaced repetition
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Learn any topic. Pass any exam. Reach your career goal. Preparing for a qualification, switching careers, or finally finishing what you started. MindMax gets you where you need to be. Learning should feel like a good conversation with your most interesting friend. But it doesn't. MindMax is your personal learning coach. Someone who finds the gaps in your knowledge, teaches you in priority order, and makes sure you remember it. Learn in the car, between shifts, on the commute. Chat to your coach in real time: interrupt, ask questions, go back. Every session adapts to you. Designed by a Grand Master of Memory, so even the trickiest topics stick. We've rebuilt learning from scratch. All the impact of one-on-one learning. None of the $70 an hour. No content libraries. No 45-hour lecture videos. This is what learning was always supposed to feel like.
Mindful Design
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Mindfulness was never the breath. It's the notice. That half-second where a reflex turns into a choice. Five short courses for the working day, five lessons in each. Every lesson starts from one ordinary moment: a meeting that turned tense, a message you nearly sent, a room you walked into too fast. This is practice, not meditation. Almost none of it happens sitting still, so almost none of it asks you to. The five courses Under Pressure. Attention. Listening. Difficult Moments. Leadership. Five lessons in each, and a short introduction that says what the app is before you start. Leadership here means how your attention and your decisions land on other people. Not a title, and not having anyone report to you. If you have seen the word in a job description and decided it meant somebody else, it also means you. How a lesson goes A lesson is a handful of cards you tap through, a few minutes end to end. Something to try, a question about what you noticed, and a short line of meaning. Then back to your day. They are called courses, but there is nothing to pass, nothing due, and nobody grading you. Take them in any order. What it does not do There is no account. No sign-in, no email, nothing to log in to, and nothing to buy. Every lesson is already inside the app, so all of it works with no connection at all. No ads, no analytics, no third-party tracking. Your progress stays on your device. One reminder a day, if you want one. The app asks after your first lesson, not before, because that is the first moment a reminder means anything. Ask the Guide A chat in the menu answers questions about the courses and about what you just read. The answers are AI-generated and they can be wrong, so treat the Guide as another view rather than the last word. It is not a substitute for HR, IT, or your manager. Who made it Matthew Grunewald, a certified mindfulness teacher trained by Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield, with more than ten years of daily practice. Years of designing e-learning taught him two things worth keeping: keep it short, and start from a real moment rather than an idea. Mindful Design is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, EIN 41-3044531. It exists to make practical mindfulness education free for everyone, paid for by donations. The app is free and stays free. Donating is optional, it happens in your browser through Givebutter, and nothing in the app is held back if you do not. ```
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Mindful Design at none against MindMax's 5. Mindful Design also leads on device support (3 vs 1). On price, update cadence, ads and iOS requirement 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. MindMax sells 5 in-app purchases, starting at $10.00 per month. Mindful Design asks for nothing beyond the download.
MindMax ships an update weekly, Mindful Design every 6 days. The most recent releases landed on October 20, 2026 and October 10, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | MindMax | Mindful Design |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.9 (1.1K ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 85.0% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 1.1K — better | — |
| Update frequency | Weekly | Every 6 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | — |
| Devices | iPhone | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 16.4 | 15.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 158 MB | 4 MB |
| Age rating | 12+ | 4+ |
| Developer | MindMax Limited | The Mindful Design |
In-app purchases
MindMax
- Pro7 Days trial$10.001 Month
- Monthly7 Days trial$25.001 Month
- Quarterly7 Days trial$50.003 Months
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- Annual7 Days trial$80.001 Year
- Ultra yearly7 Days trial$200.001 Year
Mindful Design
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is MindMax free?
Is Mindful Design free?
Do MindMax or Mindful Design have ads?
Which is updated more often, MindMax or Mindful Design?
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