Gongfu Tea Timer vs Pekoe
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Gongfu Tea Timer
Master traditional Chinese tea ceremonies with precise steep timing for various tea types. This app offers pre-configured settings and custom profiles to ensure perfect results for every brew, including Lock Screen and Dynamic Island notifications.
- Pre-configured timing for 5 tea types
- Multiple rounds with adjusted steep times
- Rinse step support
- Custom tea profile creation
- Lock Screen timer
- Dynamic Island support
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Master the art of gongfu tea brewing with precise timing for every steep. Gongfu Tea Timer guides you through the traditional Chinese tea ceremony with optimized steep times for different tea types. Whether you're brewing delicate green tea or robust pu-erh, get perfect results every time. FEATURES: • Pre-configured timing for 5 tea types: Green, Black, Oolong, White, and Pu-erh • Multiple rounds with automatically adjusted steep times • Rinse step for teas that benefit from it • Additional steep generation for extended sessions • Create and save custom tea profiles LIVE ACTIVITIES: • See your timer on the Lock Screen • Dynamic Island support for iPhone 14 Pro and newer • Get alerts when each round completes without opening the app DESIGNED FOR GONGFU: Unlike generic kitchen timers, this app understands gongfu brewing. Each tea type has carefully calibrated times that increase with each steep, following traditional gongfu methodology. Perfect for tea enthusiasts who want consistent, delicious results from their gongfu sessions.
Pekoe
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Pekoe is a private tea timer, personal recipe book, and tasting journal, for iPhone and iPad. Every tea opens on its exact recipe already set: 35 teas from 25 regions, each with its temperature, leaf, water, steeps. No account, no ads. Multiple infusions, gongfu style: each steep keeps its own time, and the next begins right where the last one ended. Brew, taste, judge in one tap, too light, just right, too strong, and Pekoe proposes one clear change for next time, in plain words. Accept it, and your recipe quietly becomes yours. THE LOOP • Every tea opens on its exact recipe, temperature, leaf, water, steeps • A timer built for tea: multiple infusions, and a Live Activity on your Lock Screen and Dynamic Island • After the cup, one tap: Too light / Just right / Too strong • Too strong, but how? Bitter or heavy: the nuance picks the lever, water or leaf, and the advice says why. Never a black box • Next time, that tea remembers. "Your recipe", it says. It means it. • The recipe thread: every adjustment you kept, drawn on the tea's page, your taste as a line you can read • The tea page opens on the recipe, then says what the tea remembers of you: your last verdict and the change you kept, in words ONE PEKOE, EVERY SCREEN • On iPad, the brew screen opens into a full brewing bench, the dial on one side; steeps, ideal window, and origin on the other • Widgets bring the kettle closer, start your last tea from the Home Screen or Lock Screen • °C or °F: one setting, and every recipe, slider, and cooling curve follows • Your journal, teas, and recipes sync privately through your own iCloud. Never a Pekoe server. THE ATLAS • The world of tea has a tab of its own: every region drawn from real geography, each with its story • Every one of the 25 regions now wears a painted card, gouache on paper, and says so: each is labelled as the illustration it is • "In harvest this month" and "in harvest soon": see which of your teas are being plucked, all year round • Gardens on the map: real tea gardens to visit, region by region • Blends show every origin, Earl Grey maps both its Anhui black and its Calabrian bergamot • Paintings from the world's great museums, all public domain YOUR TEAS • A curated catalog of 35 teas from 25 real growing regions: origin, process, harvest calendar, and the story of each leaf • Five herbal infusions join the leaf: lavender from Valensole, linden from the Baronnies, peppermint from Milly, hibiscus, and ginger. Each with its own recipe, and a map of where the plant comes from • How each tea is made, drawn: twenty-one gestures in a single ink line, from withering to firing • Every tea wears the color of its cup, celadon to copper • Theine at a glance, in words, never milligrams • Add your own teas in seconds: a name and a family are enough • Find any tea from Spotlight, Pekoe answers before it opens YOUR JOURNAL • Every session stamped and searchable, parameters, verdict, stars, notes • Edit anything, even the date. Last night's forgotten pot has a place • Deleted by mistake? Undo. Six seconds of forgiveness YOURS, FULL STOP • No account. No ads. No tracking. No Pekoe server • Your data lives on your devices and in your private iCloud, where Pekoe cannot see it • Export your whole journal as JSON or CSV anytime, and restore it just as easily • Something to tell us? One line in Settings opens a mail you write and send yourself. Pekoe sends nothing on its own Siri speaks tea, in English and French: "Start a brew in Pekoe", "Brew again in Pekoe", "Just boiled in Pekoe". And Pekoe itself speaks English, French, Japanese, and Arabic, fully right to left, down to the dial. Pekoe remembers how you brew, so every cup gets better.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is iOS requirement: Gongfu Tea Timer at 16.2 against Pekoe's 18.5. On price, update cadence, 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.
Both ship on a similar rhythm, roughly every 2 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 28, 2026 and October 5, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Gongfu Tea Timer | Pekoe |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (6 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 6 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 2 weeks | Every 2 weeks |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | — |
| Devices | iPhone | iPhone, iPad — better |
| Requires iOS | 16.2 — better | 18.5 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 2 MB | 19 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | RAYMOND LIU LUO | Izuba |
In-app purchases
Gongfu Tea Timer
No in-app purchases
Pekoe
No in-app purchases









