Comparison

Vesper vs Five

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

Head to head
About

Vesper

Features
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How did today feel? That's the only question Vesper ever asks. No streaks to protect. No scores to chase. No guilt for the days you miss. Vesper doesn’t gamify your feelings or compete for your attention, it asks once each evening, then gets out of your way. What’s left, over time, is an honest, quiet record of your life worth actually looking back on. WHAT VESPER DOES Every evening, Vesper asks how today felt: Good, Meh or Hard. Add a line if you want to remember why. Your answer becomes one colored dot on a simple monthly grid. Miss a day and nothing happens, no penalty, no broken chain to mourn. Vesper never judges your day. It just holds it. Tap any past day to see what you wrote. Once you’ve kept it up for six months, your memory trail unlocks: every note you’ve ever written, in one place, in your own words. VESPER PLUS For anyone who wants to see the bigger picture, Vesper Plus reveals patterns that only show up over time: - Side by Side, comparing recent months at a glance - Shape of Your Weeks, seeing which days tend to feel harder - Quietest & Fullest, the months that stood apart - Yearly Portrait, one full year, at a glance - On This Day, a quiet echo of what today looked like a month or a year ago Plus also includes: - iCloud sync, so your record follows you across every device - An Apple Watch app, for checking in from your wrist - A home screen widget, a glance at your month without opening the app - Curated themes: Chalk, Marigold, and Ink - Anytime check-in, if evenings aren't when your day actually ends Vesper Plus is available as a monthly or annual subscription, or a one-time lifetime purchase. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ YOUR DATA STAYS YOURS Vesper syncs privately through your own iCloud account. Nothing is shared, sold, or used to train anything. Some days are good. Some are hard. Most are somewhere in between. Vesper is a quiet place to keep track of all of them. For details on subscriptions and purchases, see Apple's Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

About

Five

Features
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Is task paralysis or ADHD making starting feel impossible? You are not alone. The five-minute rule removes the barrier that keeps procrastination going. The five-minute rule is a tool from cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT): commit to working on an avoided task for just five minutes, after which you are completely free to stop. It works because starting is the hardest part of any avoided task. It is not a trick. It is the mechanism. A five-minute commitment is small enough that the dread protecting the task has nothing to push against, and an honest permission to quit is what makes the commitment believable to the part of you that is avoiding. HOW IT WORKS First: when you are avoiding a task, whether it is the email, the dishes or the study session, commit to doing it for just five minutes. Second: when the five minutes are up, you are genuinely free to stop. No guilt, no fine print. Five is a five-minute timer built around that rule. Name the smallest first move, press start, and let the timer hold the rest. It is made for people with ADHD, other neurodivergent people, and anyone who gets stuck at the start. It will not do the task for you. It gets you unstuck. IT COUNTS STARTS, NOT FINISHES The moment the timer begins, the start is recorded. Stop after forty seconds and it still counts, because it was still a start. There are no streaks to break, no missed days marked in red, and no notification asking where you have been. Come back after three months and your record is exactly as you left it. THE GAP BETWEEN DREAD AND REALITY You can rate how bad a task feels before you start and how bad it actually was afterwards. Over time the difference between those two numbers becomes visible, and for most people it points the same direction: things are usually less bad than they look from the outside. That is not encouragement. It is your own record. A PLANT THAT ONLY GROWS A leaf unfurls for every completed five minutes. It never wilts, never shrinks, and never reacts to time away. It is a record of what you did, not a pet that suffers when you are busy. PRIVATE BY CONSTRUCTION There is no account and no sign-in. Your record and everything you type stay on your phone, and Settings can export all of it to a file at any time. Five sends anonymous usage counts so it can be improved, never anything that identifies you, and you can switch them off in Settings. What you type as your first move is shown back to you once and never parsed, categorised, or counted. WRITTEN INTENTIONS You can write a plan in your own words, at your own time: "When it's 9:00 on Tuesdays, I start five minutes on the report." It offers, it does not nag. WHAT FIVE IS NOT Not a to-do list. Not a habit tracker with a score. Not therapy, and not a substitute for it. It does one small thing, which is to make starting easier by making it smaller. SUBSCRIPTION Five is free for one week, everything included. After that it is a monthly or yearly subscription, and the app shows the price in your currency before you subscribe. Your record stays on your phone whether you subscribe or not, and can be exported at any time. Payment is charged to your Apple Account when you confirm the purchase. The subscription renews automatically unless it is cancelled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. Manage or cancel it in Settings, under your Apple Account, then Subscriptions. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://sinky79.github.io/five-legal/privacy.html

Screenshots

Vesper4 screens
Five4 screens

Verdict

The call

Vesper and Five are too close to call on the numbers: across 5 compared parameters — price, ads, in-app purchases and device support among them — neither pulls far enough ahead to decide it. What separates them is feature set and interface, not measurable difference.

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. Vesper sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $1.99 per month and Five sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $2.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

ScorecardNo meaningful differences
Vesper versus Five: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterVesperFive
PriceFreeFree
Update frequency—Every 2 weeks
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
DevicesiPhone, Apple Watch — betteriPhone
Requires iOS17.6 — better18.0
Further details — not scored
Size7 MB8 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperCalvin NgIikka Salmi

In-app purchases

3 purchases

Vesper

Subscriptions2
  • Vesper Plus Monthly$1.991 Month
  • Vesper Plus Annual$14.991 Year
One-time1
  • Vesper Plus Lifetime$49.99
2 purchases

Five

Subscriptions2
  • Five Monthly7 Days trial$2.991 Month
  • Five Annual7 Days trial$24.991 Year

Questions

Is Vesper free?
Vesper is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Five free?
Five is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do Vesper or Five have ads?
Neither Vesper nor Five shows ads.

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