Comparison

Span vs RetroDotTimer

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

Head to head
About

Span

Track upcoming events with live countdowns or elapsed time since past moments. Log daily habits, discover patterns, and explore historical events with rich media. Organize and share your time-related data seamlessly.

Highlights
  • Live second-by-second countdowns
  • Elapsed time tracking
  • Habit and routine logging
  • Historical 'On This Day' events
  • Customizable widgets
  • Shareable event cards
  • iCloud backup and sync
Features
Read full description

Your relationship with time, all in one place. Count down to birthdays, trips, and deadlines, or see how long it’s been since a milestone. Log recurring events with Trackers and explore history with On This Day. No accounts. No ads. No tracking. SPANS - Live Countdowns — See years, months, days, hours, minutes, and seconds until or since a date. Date-only spans count calendar days. - Apple Calendar — Choose events to import, review their details, and keep selected events updated or make one-time copies. Span never adds new Calendar events automatically or writes changes back to Calendar. - Smart Emoji Suggestions — Get up to three matching emoji as you type, using on-device Apple Intelligence when available. - Yearly Recurrence — Repeat birthdays and anniversaries, with smart holiday dates that adjust each year. - Holiday Templates — Start with 22 US holidays and cultural events, including Thanksgiving, Easter, Christmas, Hanukkah, and Chinese New Year. - Weather — Add a US ZIP code for historical weather or a forecast within the next 16 days. - Tags — Give spans and trackers custom tags with optional colors. Read tag names on cards and filter by one or several tags. - Organize — Filter by upcoming, elapsed, or archived; sort by date, name, or custom order. Choose Reorganize to drag rows into place. - Share — Send a styled countdown image or a link that opens in Span. TRACKERS - Log Anything — Tap once to record an event and see the time since your last entry. - Patterns — Frequency statistics show how often you typically do something. - Full History — Add dated entries, edit timestamps, or delete mistakes. - 14 Templates — Workout, Run, Coffee, Meditation, Shower, and more. ON THIS DAY Browse notable historical events for any date, powered by Wikipedia. Open an event to read its description and a related Wikipedia article. Images appear when available. Optional daily notifications bring you a historical event to explore. WIDGETS - Span Widget — Small, medium, or large, plus extra-large portrait on iOS 27. Auto mode follows your Spans tab’s filters, tags, and sort order, or you can choose spans manually. Tap a row to open that span. - On This Day Widget — Daily history on your Home Screen, with an extra-large portrait option on iOS 27. Tap to open the matching event. SIRI & SHORTCUTS Create spans, get countdowns, and log tracker entries with Siri and Shortcuts on iOS 26 and later. NOTIFICATIONS Get notified at a span’s event time or choose an advance reminder in minutes, hours, or days. Enable daily history alerts separately. BACKUP Manually back up and restore your spans and trackers with iCloud Drive. Your backup stays in your own iCloud account. FREE & PRO Track up to 2 spans and 1 tracker for free. Unlock unlimited spans and trackers with a one-time Span Pro purchase. PRIVACY No account, advertising, or analytics. Your spans and trackers stay on your device, with optional backup to your own iCloud Drive.

About

RetroDotTimer

Features
Read full description

A full-screen countdown that looks like the dot-matrix displays of vintage arcades and early computing. Set the time, put your iPhone or iPad face up on your desk, and let the pixel grid count down. ONE TIMER, FULL SCREEN • A large dot-matrix countdown, readable across the room • Tap the display to start, pause, or resume — or turn on the Start/Pause button if you prefer one • Optional landscape mode that fills the whole screen • Keep the screen awake while a timer runs, with an only-while-charging option LOCK SCREEN AND DYNAMIC ISLAND • The Live Activity shows a real dot-matrix face, not a plain text label • It counts down on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island • It follows the color scheme you chose in the app, including changes made mid-run • At zero it morphs into a checkmark and chimes once WIDGETS, CONTROLS, AND SIRI • A Home Screen widget that mirrors the timer, display-only • Control Center buttons to start a Pomodoro or a preset without opening the app • Siri and Shortcuts: start a timer, a preset, a Pomodoro, or the stopwatch, and pause, resume, or reset TIMER MODES • Presets: 5, 10, 25, and 45 minutes • Custom duration, 1 to 180 minutes • Classic Pomodoro: 25 minutes of work, 5-minute breaks, a 15-minute long break, 4 rounds • Stopwatch with a live hundredths-of-a-second sub-display • Multi-phase custom timers for intervals, rounds, and routines DISPLAY STYLES • Dot Matrix — the original pixel grid, with adjustable dot weight and square or round dots • 7-Segment — slanted LED calculator digits • Flip Clock — split-flap digits with animated transitions (Pro) • Big & Small — blocky digits with size-varied segments (Pro) COLOR • Transparent, Dark, and Light schemes • Six premium schemes: Amber, Green Terminal, Blue Glow, VFD Cyan, Sunset, Neon Pink (Pro) • Any text and background color you like (Pro) • Multicolored digits with Rainbow, Pastel, Neon, and Sunset palettes (Pro) WHEN TIME IS UP • Freeze at 00 or morph into a checkmark • A notification when the countdown ends • Sound and haptic alerts between Pomodoro and custom-timer phases WHAT THIS IS NOT Retro Dot-Matrix Timer runs one timer at a time. No task lists, no labels, no session history, no analytics, no cloud sync. It is a single, quiet countdown. PRIVACY No accounts, no tracking, no analytics, no data collection. Everything works offline. FREE AND PRO The app is a free download and stays useful forever without paying. Presets, custom durations, the Dot Matrix and 7-Segment displays, square dots, Pomodoro, the stopwatch, the widget, Control Center buttons, Siri shortcuts, and the Live Activity are all free. Pro is a single one-time purchase, never a subscription. On iPhone and iPad it adds the Custom Timer Editor, six premium color schemes, custom colors, multicolored digits, and the Flip Clock and Big & Small displays. Pro is a Universal Purchase — the same payment unlocks the Mac menu-bar app. Every Pro feature is unlocked free for 14 days, starting automatically at first launch. No signup, no payment details. When the trial ends nothing is charged, Pro features simply return to the free tier, and any custom timers you saved stay runnable. LANGUAGES English, Spanish, Spanish (Latin America), German, French, Simplified Chinese. REQUIREMENTS iOS 18.0 or later. iPhone and iPad. SUPPORT contact@andeanbearstudios.com

Screenshots

Span4 screens
RetroDotTimer4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is device support: RetroDotTimer at 3 against Span's 1. RetroDotTimer also leads on iOS requirement (18.0 vs 26.0). 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Span sells 1 one-off in-app purchase and RetroDotTimer sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Span ships an update every 3 weeks, RetroDotTimer fortnightly. The most recent releases landed on September 30, 2026 and September 20, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard2 real differences · 8 level
Span versus RetroDotTimer: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterSpanRetroDotTimer
PriceFreeFree
Rating5.0 (8 ratings) — better—
Positive reviews100.0% of reviews—
Number of ratings8 — better—
Update frequencyEvery 3 weeksFortnightly — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFree—
DevicesiPhoneiPhone, iPad, Mac — better
Requires iOS26.018.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size6 MB6 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperShamir WehbeAndean Bear Studios GmbH

In-app purchases

1 purchases

Span

One-time1
  • Span Pro$1.99
1 purchases

RetroDotTimer

One-time1
  • RetroDotTimer Pro$4.99

Questions

Is Span free?
Span is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is RetroDotTimer free?
RetroDotTimer is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do Span or RetroDotTimer have ads?
Neither Span nor RetroDotTimer shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Span or RetroDotTimer?
Span ships an update every 3 weeks, and RetroDotTimer fortnightly. Most recently, Span was updated on September 30, 2026 and RetroDotTimer on September 20, 2026.

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