Bowl Timer vs MindTime
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Bowl Timer
This app helps you meditate without distractions using calming bowl gongs. You can customize session lengths and intervals, with all settings saved locally. It's completely free, offline, and ad-free.
- Guided meditation with bowl gongs
- Customizable session lengths up to 60 minutes
- Split sessions into 1-5 intervals
- Local settings saving
- Total meditation time tracking
- 100% free and offline
Read full descriptionHide full description
• Meditate for up to 60 minutes, guided by calming bowl gongs. • Split sessions into 1 to 5 intervals for transitions or gentle reminders. • Locally saves your settings and displays total meditation time after 2 hours. • 100% free and offline—no ads, accounts, or tracking. Stay focused, mindful, and fully present during your meditation.
MindTime
This app offers a customizable meditation timer with various bell sounds and session types. Track your progress, build daily streaks, and reflect with an optional journal. Enjoy a distraction-free experience designed to support your mindfulness practice.
- Customizable timer durations
- Choice of 8 meditation bells
- Interval bells with adjustable volume
- Four session types (Meditation, Sleep, Focus, Relaxation)
- Daily streaks and practice tracking
- Optional journaling feature
- Cloud sync across devices
Read full descriptionHide full description
A silent meditation timer that gets out of the way. No guided voices, no feed, no ads — just a bell, your breath, and the time you choose. Most meditation apps want your attention. MindTime gives it back. Set a duration, pick a bell, and sit. When you finish, your streak, your stats and your journal are waiting — and nothing else is. Built for a real practice MindTime is the timer, not a content library. It is made for people who already sit: vipassana and insight meditation, zen and zazen, mindfulness and MBSR, samatha and anapanasati, metta, breathwork, yoga nidra — or simply sitting quietly for ten minutes a day. Silent by design • No voices, ever: nothing talks over your session. No guided tracks, no teacher, no feed to scroll. • Vibration-only mode: feel your interval bells instead of hearing them — made for retreats, shared rooms, offices, dorms and late nights beside a sleeping partner. • Fully silent mode: or switch every sound off and let the session simply end. • No ads, no interruptions: nothing appears while you are sitting. Your timer, your way • Any duration: from seconds to hours — or endless mode with no time limit at all. • Warm-up phase: settle in before the session really begins. • Presets: save your usual sit and start it with a single tap. • Four session types: Meditation, Sleep, Focus and Relaxation, each with its own statistics. Six interval bells that bring you back • Six recorded bells: three Tibetan singing bowls (Manipuri, Jambati, Thadobati), a crystal bowl, a Hanchi gong and Koshi chimes. • Start, interval and end bells: set each one separately — ring every 5 minutes, every 10, or at any interval you like. • Independent volumes: every bell has its own level, so nothing ever jolts you out of a sit. • Or no bell at all: vibration only, or complete silence. 31 soundscapes — entirely optional • Noise: brown noise, light brown and intense brown noise, white noise, pink noise, green noise and blue noise. • Rain and nature: gentle rain, heavy rainfall, thunderstorms, rain on a van, ocean waves, a mountain river, forest birds and crackling fire. • Ambient and frequency: zen garden stream, choir pad, cosmic space, 174 Hz, 285 Hz and 528 Hz. • Silence is the default: mix a soundscape under your session only when you want one. Build the habit • Daily streaks: see your consistency at a glance. • Real statistics: total sessions, total minutes and average session length, broken down by type. • Weekly view: the days you actually practiced. • Gentle reminders: stay on track without being nagged. Reflect with a journal • Session notes: capture what came up while it is still fresh. • History: browse back through weeks and months to notice patterns. • Optional: turn journaling off in Settings and never see it again. Distraction-free by design • Hide the clock: show or hide the countdown and the progress circle — some people focus better without a number. • Screen stays on: your phone never interrupts a sit. • Gentle fade-out: eases you out of the session instead of cutting it off. • Cloud sync: presets, history and streaks stay in step across your devices. • No sign-up needed: open the app and start. The timer and all six bells work offline. Available in 38 languages. Website: https://mindtime.app Terms: https://mindtime.app/terms Privacy: https://mindtime.app/privacy
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Bowl Timer at none against MindTime's 2. Bowl Timer also leads on review sentiment (100% vs 83%). MindTime's advantage is update cadence (every 8 days vs every 2 months). On price, rating, ratings volume 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. MindTime sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $9.99 per year. Bowl Timer asks for nothing beyond the download.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 5.0 for Bowl Timer against 4.9 for MindTime. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 4 and 9 respectively. Written reviews are what separate them: 100% of Bowl Timer's written reviews are positive against 83% of MindTime's.
Bowl Timer ships an update every 2 months, MindTime every 8 days. The most recent releases landed on October 30, 2026 and November 5, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Bowl Timer | MindTime |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (4 ratings) — better | 4.9 (9 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better | 83.3% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 4 | 9 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months | Every 8 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | Free — better | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod, Apple Watch — better |
| Requires iOS | 15.0 — better | 15.3 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 51 MB | 167 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Johannes Roth | Christian Krueger |
Customer experience
Bowl Timer
MindTime
In-app purchases
Bowl Timer
No in-app purchases
MindTime
- MindTime Premium Subscription$9.991 Year
- MindTime Premium$19.99
Questions
Is Bowl Timer free?
Is MindTime free?
Which has better reviews, Bowl Timer or MindTime?
Do Bowl Timer or MindTime have ads?
Which is updated more often, Bowl Timer or MindTime?
Other comparisons















