Merit vs AppLimiter Screen Time Control

$5.99 once. No subscription, ever. Every other app in this category charges you weekly to stay off your phone. One of them wants $10 a week. That's $520 a year to not open Instagram, which is about where the cure starts costing more than the disease. Merit locks the apps you pick. Getting them back costs you something real: walking, moving, standing up, sleeping. HOW EARNING WORKS No "I did it" button. Merit reads your activity out of Apple Health and does the math itself. Nothing to fake. Apps that let you type in your own workout are inviting you to lie to yourself, and plenty of people take them up on it. 1,000 steps = 5 minutes 10 minutes of exercise = 10 minutes Each stand hour = 2 minutes 7 hours of sleep = 15 bonus minutes Spend the credit to open something you blocked. When the time runs out the block comes back by itself. STUDY MODE Blocking Instagram shouldn't take your calculator with it. Merit keeps an allowlist for the things you actually need, and it's free. Every competitor has reviews complaining about this exact problem, so putting it behind a paywall wasn't something I was willing to do. FREE Blocking, the allowlist, earning from your step count. This isn't a trial. It doesn't expire. $5.99 Three more ways to earn: exercise minutes, stand hours, sleep. Separate blocking profiles, because work and Saturday don't need the same rules. And a record of where your screen time actually came from. One payment. Whatever worked before you paid still works after. PRIVACY No account. The apps you pick are stored as opaque tokens that never leave your phone, so I couldn't tell you what you blocked even if you wanted me to. Health data is read-only. One thing does get sent: a few anonymous counters, like how often the app gets opened and how many blocks ran their course. They hang off a random ID. What you blocked is not in there, and could not be. Settings has a switch if you would rather it sent nothing.

AppLimiter helps you break automatic scrolling by limiting how often distracting apps can be opened - not just how long they can be used. Use it for yourself, or protect the settings with a PIN when setting limits for your child. Traditional screen-time limits fade into the background. AppLimiter puts a deliberate pause at the door. Before access is granted, you see how many opens remain and decide whether the session is worth one. HOW IT WORKS Choose apps or categories, set a daily number of opens, and decide how long each session lasts. When a session ends, close the app or spend another opening to continue. When the budget is empty, selected apps stay blocked until the next daily reset. BUILD LIMITS THAT FIT YOUR LIFE • Daily opening budgets for individual apps or entire categories • Session lengths from 1 to 60 minutes • PIN-protected settings for parent-managed limits • Separate limits for weekdays, weekends or custom days • Cooldowns to prevent immediately reopening an app • Blocked hours for sleep, school, work, or focused time • Friction mode adds a short delay before an opening is used • Always Allowed list for essential apps • Emergency passes for moments that genuinely need one • Daily goals, streaks, and weekly progress reports FOR YOURSELF OR YOUR CHILD Use AppLimiter to build healthier habits on your own device, or enable PIN protection when setting limits for your child. Protected rules and settings cannot be changed inside AppLimiter without entering the PIN. DESIGNED TO RESIST IMPULSE AppLimiter uses Apple’s Screen Time technology to enforce limits, even when AppLimiter is not open. Self-managed limits require a deliberate typed confirmation to change, so one impulsive tap cannot undo your plan. PRIVATE BY DESIGN No account. No sign-up. No ads. No analytics. No backend servers. Your settings stay on the iPhone, and selected apps are handled through Apple’s privacy-preserving Screen Time framework. REQUIREMENTS AppLimiter requires Screen Time authorization to apply limits. You grant it once during setup and can revoke it at any time in Settings. Requires iOS 26 or later.