Comparison

Blocks vs FireFlow for Firefly III

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

Head to head
About

Blocks

This app helps you manage your personal finances without subscriptions or ads. It automates bill payments, tracks income, and provides a clear overview of your spending and savings. Your data is kept private and stored locally or synced via iCloud.

Highlights
  • Automated bill payments
  • Income tracking
  • Private data storage
  • Customizable paychecks
  • Variable bill reminders
  • Automatic savings sweeps
  • Quick purchase logging
Features
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I built Blocks for myself. I get paid every two weeks. Most of my bills are monthly. Every budget app I tried wanted a subscription, my bank login, or both. So I made the app I actually wanted, and now I'm sharing it. Blocks is truly free. No ads. No accounts. No subscriptions. No locked features. No "premium" tier. New features ship to everyone, free, forever. Blocks collects nothing. No sign-up, no analytics, no tracking. Your budget lives on your device and syncs through your own private iCloud. Nobody else can see it, including me. Blocks does the work for you. • Paychecks appear automatically on payday, whether weekly, biweekly, or monthly, including 3-paycheck months • Recurring bills post themselves, labeled with who was paid • Variable bills (like electricity) remind you and carry an off-season cushion for expensive months • Month-end surplus can sweep to savings automatically, and the app tells you exactly how much to move at your bank • One glance shows what you can actually spend, with upcoming bills already set aside Blocks stays out of your way. • Whole dollars only, with no cents and no clutter • Log a purchase in two taps with a swipe, the Action button, or "Hey Siri, log groceries in Blocks" followed by "50 tacos" • Payee suggestions learn from your own history • An annual view shows income, spending, and savings across the year • Clean black-and-white design, native to iOS, beautiful in dark mode I keep improving Blocks for my own budget, and every update ships to you too. If it helps you, that genuinely makes me happy.

About

FireFlow for Firefly III

Features
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FireFlow is a native iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch client for Firefly III — the personal finance software you run on your own server. There is no account to create and no service in the middle. FireFlow talks to one computer: the one whose address you type in. If your instance lives on your home network, your finances never leave your house. RECORD IT WHEN IT HAPPENS Cash purchases happen where there's no signal — a market stall, a car park, a basement till. FireFlow takes the transaction anyway, marks it as waiting, and sends it the moment your server is reachable again. Nothing is lost and nothing is sent twice. Home tells you when you're offline and what's waiting to sync, and anything your server refuses appears with the reason and a choice of retrying or discarding it. Add a transaction however is closest to hand: • Ask Siri — "Add an expense at Soriana in FireFlow" • A three-tap quick add on Apple Watch • The + on your Home Screen widget, Control Center or the Action Button SEE WHERE YOU STAND • Net worth across all your accounts, per currency — never blended, because two currencies have no honest sum • Assets and liabilities, grouped, with the accounts you've excluded from net worth kept out of it • Twelve periods of history: net worth over time, money in against money out, and where it actually went • Budgets and bills, piggy banks you can add money to from the card, and spending paced against the same days last month • Home Screen, Lock Screen and Apple Watch widgets and complications showing the figure you choose ON IPAD A sidebar in landscape, the transaction list and the one you pick side by side, keyboard shortcuts, right-click menus, and receipts you drag in from Photos, Files or Mail. BILLS AND RECEIPTS • A reminder before each bill is due — on the day, the day before or three days ahead. Tap Record payment and the expense opens already filled in and linked to the bill • Turn any payment into a recurring bill, or change, pause and delete bills from the app • Scan a ticket, pick a photo or attach a file. On a new expense FireFlow reads the total, date and shop on your phone — nothing is sent anywhere but your server EVERY TRANSACTION, AT ANY DISTANCE Search covers every date, not just the period you're looking at. Filter by account, type or currency, with each day's net change per account. Scroll back through years. Create, edit, clone and delete, including split transactions — and a transfer between your own accounts is shown from the account you're standing in, so moving money never reads as income. BUILT FOR ONE SERVER: YOURS • Multiple instances, switch between them freely • Behind Cloudflare Access, Authelia or a similar gateway? Add the headers it needs, per server • Amounts in your own number format, or typed in cents • Your token lives in the iOS Keychain • Optional Face ID or Touch ID lock, with a delay you choose • Hide balances with one tap — and it hides them everywhere, including the charts, widgets and what VoiceOver reads aloud • Full VoiceOver support: transactions read as sentences, charts can be played as audio graphs • Dynamic Type all the way to the largest accessibility sizes • Light and dark, fifteen accent colours PRIVACY, PLAINLY No analytics. No tracking. No third-party code of any kind. Nothing is collected about you, because there is nowhere for it to go — there is no backend. Deleting the app, or "Delete all local data" in Settings, removes every trace from the device and touches nothing on your server. WHAT YOU NEED A Firefly III instance you can reach, and a Personal Access Token from it. If you don't have one yet, tap "Try the demo" on the first screen to see the whole app running on sample data with no network calls at all. HELP SHAPE IT Join the beta or send an idea from Settings → About. FireFlow is built by one person who reads every message. FireFlow is an independent app and is not affiliated with the Firefly III project.

Screenshots

Blocks4 screens
FireFlow for Firefly III4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is device support: FireFlow for Firefly III at 3 against Blocks's 1. Blocks's advantage is 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. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Blocks ships an update weekly, FireFlow for Firefly III every 5 days. The most recent releases landed on October 25, 2026 and October 29, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard2 real differences · 7 level
Blocks versus FireFlow for Firefly III: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterBlocksFireFlow for Firefly III
PriceFreeFree
Rating5.0 (1 ratings) — better—
Number of ratings1 — better—
Update frequencyWeeklyEvery 5 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationFree—
DevicesiPhoneiPhone, iPad, Apple Watch — better
Requires iOS18.0 — better26.0
Further details — not scored
Size3 MB14 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperHirthik BhojwaniAnton Krall

In-app purchases

None

Blocks

No in-app purchases

None

FireFlow for Firefly III

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Blocks free?
Blocks is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is FireFlow for Firefly III free?
FireFlow for Firefly III is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do Blocks or FireFlow for Firefly III have ads?
Neither Blocks nor FireFlow for Firefly III shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Blocks or FireFlow for Firefly III?
Blocks ships an update weekly, and FireFlow for Firefly III every 5 days. Most recently, Blocks was updated on October 25, 2026 and FireFlow for Firefly III on October 29, 2026.

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