Comparison

Cadence vs Orbital Focus

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

Head to head
About

Cadence

This app helps you build positive routines or break bad ones with a focus on daily progress. It offers flexible tracking options, visual progress overviews, and on-device data privacy. Unlock unlimited habits and sync features with a one-time purchase.

Highlights
  • Flexible habit scheduling
  • Visual progress grids and heatmaps
  • Momentum rings for 30-day performance
  • Apple Watch and widget support
  • Actionable lock screen alerts
  • Private, on-device data storage
Features
Read full description

Cadence is a calm, strictly private habit tracker with no subscriptions that helps you focus on your daily progress. No cluttered interfaces and no account signups. Whether you want to build a positive routine or break a bad one, Cadence gives you the clarity to actually stick to it. Log habits by hand, or connect Apple Health and let them log themselves. AUTOMATIC WITH APPLE HEALTH • Connect Once: Link a habit to a Health metric like steps, workouts, water, sleep, or mindful minutes. • Logs Itself: The moment you reach your goal, Cadence marks the habit done for you. Your streak keeps going without a single tap. • You Decide: Connect only the habits you want, and switch it off any time. TRACK IT YOUR WAY • Target Goals: Set "at least" goals to build up or "at most" limits to cut back. • Simple Habits: Track "yes or no" routines like reading or meditating. • Any Schedule: Every day, specific weekdays, 3 times a week, 5 times a day, every other day. If it fits your life, Cadence can track it. • Skip Days: Mark a day as "not applicable" without breaking your streak. Life happens. SEE THE FULL PICTURE • Overview: Your home base to visualize all your habits and progress at a glance. • The Visual Grid: View your long-term consistency on a beautifully color-coded calendar heat map. • Habit Details: Track streaks, personal bests, and completion rates across weeks, months, and years. • Momentum Rings: Instantly gauge your 30-day rolling performance directly from your habit list. ON YOUR WRIST & HOME SCREEN • Apple Watch: Log habits and check your progress right from your wrist. No phone needed. • Widgets: Keep a single habit front and center with small widgets, or track your entire day at a glance. • Heatmap Widget: Put one habit's recent weeks on your Home Screen as a grid of days, shaded by how much you did, with its ring beside them. STAY ON TRACK • Actionable Alerts: Log a habit as "Done" or "Skip" directly from your lock screen without opening the app. • Smart Reminders: Nudges that adapt to you. Hit your weekly goal early, and Cadence stays quiet until next week. • Daily Notes: Attach context to any entry (like noting the weather for a run). • Adaptive Theming: Full support for Light and Dark modes with a carefully curated 28-color palette. YOUR DATA, YOUR BUSINESS Cadence has no analytics, no tracking SDKs, and no data harvesting. Your habit data lives locally on your device, with free iCloud sync through your private Apple account. Cadence reads Health data on your iPhone and never sends it to us or third parties. Health-derived habit entries may sync through your private iCloud when iCloud Sync is enabled. FREE VS. UNLOCKED Use Cadence completely free for up to 4 active habits, including full iCloud sync. Need more? A single one-time purchase unlocks Cadence: • Unlimited active habits • CSV data export and import • Home Screen widgets • Apple Watch app • All future updates No subscriptions. No auto-renewals. Pay once, own it forever.

About

Orbital Focus

This app transforms focus sessions into space missions, with longer focus times leading to higher orbits. It features customizable missions, a living 3D Earth visualization, and gamified progress tracking. Optional app blocking and ambient soundscapes enhance concentration.

Highlights
  • Themed focus sessions with space mission progression
  • Living 3D Earth visualization with real-time data
  • Gamified progress tracking with ranks and rewards
  • Optional app blocking for distraction-free work
  • Ambient focus music and soundscapes
  • Live Activities and Apple Watch companion app
Features
Read full description

Your attention is the most powerful engine you own. Orbital Focus turns every focus session into a rocket launch — pick a destination, strap in, and the only way to arrive is to stay on task. The longer you focus, the higher you fly. A 15-minute warm-up is a suborbital hop. 25 minutes is one clean orbit of Earth. A focused hour parks you in geostationary orbit, 35,786 km up. Push past 90 minutes and you leave Earth orbit entirely. Every minute is real thrust. HOW A MISSION WORKS • Pick a destination — a 15-minute Suborbital Hop, 25-minute Low Earth Orbit, a 45-minute rendezvous with Station Aurora, a full hour in High Earth Orbit, or a 90-minute Deep Space run to lunar distance. Each is a fixed block of focus. • Name your payload (the thing you're actually doing) and choose a crew role — Work, Study, Read, Create, Code, Write, Train, Plan, Chores, or Relax. • Feel the countdown. A cinematic haptic launch ritual — ignition rumble, Max-Q, stage separation — marks the real milestones of your session. • Fly a living 3D Earth. Watch your spacecraft climb its true trajectory over a hand-rendered planet with daylight, city lights, and every flight you've ever flown. • Coast phases = built-in breaks. Long missions split into burn segments with short coasts between them — pomodoro, in orbital mechanics. Fully configurable, or fly one unbroken burn. THE HANGAR Every focused minute earns Δv. Spend it across a fleet of real rockets — from the workhorse Falcon 9 to the mighty Falcon Heavy — and upgrade engines, tanks, and avionics. Launch from seven real-world pads: Cape Canaveral, Vandenberg, Baikonur, Kourou, Tanegashima, Wenchang, and Starbase. Premium also unlocks an exotic collection of legendary sci-fi capital ships, for pilots who want to fly something out of a movie. A LOYALTY PROGRAM FOR YOUR ATTENTION Climb six ranks, Cadet to Mission Commander, by logging real focus time. Ranks unlock new destinations and craft. Your lifetime distance is measured in light-seconds — and it only ever goes up. LAUNCH LOCKDOWN Optional app blocking powered by Apple's Screen Time. While a mission is in flight, your chosen distracting apps are shielded. Leave early and you don't crash — re-entries and pad scrubs still bank partial credit. Orbital Focus never punishes you for being human. THE CUPOLA Look out the window. Stream real satellite imagery of the world passing beneath your spacecraft — a live view from orbit, in flight. FOCUS MUSIC Download ambient flight-deck soundscapes on demand and cache them for offline sessions. Deep Space pilots can also pick a station skin — five orbital outposts to fly past. MISSION REPLAYS Scrub through recreated historic launches — Sputnik 1, Vostok 1, Crew Dragon Demo-2, the Space Shuttle and more — and watch them fly out on the same living globe. EVERYWHERE YOU LOOK Live Activities on the Lock Screen and Dynamic Island. An Apple Watch companion that flies on your wrist. Home Screen and Control Center widgets. Share your mission to a TV or the big screen. STREAKS, ACHIEVEMENTS, LOGBOOK Daily launch streaks, 16 achievements, and a full flight logbook with charts of where your hours actually go. ORBITAL FOCUS PREMIUM (optional) The core app is free, forever. Premium adds the live Cupola view, Advanced Insights and your full Flight Log, exclusive craft and destinations, and alternate app icons. Subscribe monthly or yearly, or unlock it once for life. Your focus minutes always bank — free or Premium. PRIVATE BY DESIGN No account. No ads in the app. We never sell your data. Every mission record lives on your device, and Screen Time data never leaves your phone. Built for students, makers, writers, engineers, and anyone with ADHD-adjacent attention who needs the session to feel like it matters. Wheels stop. Mission complete. Fly again tomorrow. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

Screenshots

Cadence4 screens
Orbital Focus4 screens

Verdict

The call

Cadence and Orbital Focus both sit at 5.0 stars, but that hides the real split: 100% of Cadence's written reviews are positive against 89% of Orbital Focus's. Orbital Focus's advantage is device support (4 vs 2) and iOS requirement (18.0 vs 26.0). On price, rating, ratings volume and update cadence 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. Cadence sells 1 one-off in-app purchase and Orbital Focus sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 5.0 for Cadence against 5.0 for Orbital Focus. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 9 and 11 respectively. Written reviews are what separate them: 100% of Cadence's written reviews are positive against 89% of Orbital Focus's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Cadence ships an update every 10 days, Orbital Focus every 2 weeks. Both last shipped on October 7, 2026.

Scorecard3 real differences · 7 level
Cadence versus Orbital Focus: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterCadenceOrbital Focus
PriceFreeFree
Rating5.0 (9 ratings)5.0 (11 ratings)
Positive reviews100.0% of reviews — better88.9% of reviews
Number of ratings911 — better
Update frequencyEvery 10 days — betterEvery 2 weeks
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFree with in-app purchasesFree with in-app purchases
DevicesiPhone, Apple WatchiPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch — better
Requires iOS26.018.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size17 MB301 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperHyundoh KimRed Honey LLC

Customer experience

Cadence

All ratings9 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews4 reviews
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

Orbital Focus

All ratings11 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews9 reviews
Positive88.9%
Neutral0.0%
Negative11.1%

In-app purchases

1 purchases

Cadence

One-time1
  • Lifetime Access$2.99
3 purchases

Orbital Focus

Subscriptions2
  • Monthly$4.991 Month
  • Yearly$19.991 Year
One-time1
  • LifetimeFree

Questions

Is Cadence free?
Cadence is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Orbital Focus free?
Orbital Focus is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, Cadence or Orbital Focus?
Cadence and Orbital Focus are both rated 5.0 out of 5 on the App Store, from 9 and 11 ratings respectively.
Do Cadence or Orbital Focus have ads?
Neither Cadence nor Orbital Focus shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Cadence or Orbital Focus?
Cadence ships an update every 10 days, and Orbital Focus every 2 weeks. Most recently, Cadence was updated on October 7, 2026 and Orbital Focus on October 7, 2026.

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