Sumbi vs Commonplace
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Sumbi
This app uses a focus timer to encourage users to put down their phones. Successful focus sessions grow a virtual ocean and attract sea creatures, creating a calming visual reward for digital detox and concentration building.
- Focus timer for study and work
- Digital detox and screen time reduction
- Virtual ocean with collectible sea creatures
- Gamified focus sessions
- Share creatures with friends
- Ad-free experience
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The longer you put your phone down, the deeper your life gets. Start the timer, set your phone down, and sea creatures come to your ocean. From exam prep to digital detox, dive with Sumbi. Sumbi is a study focus timer and digital detox app named after the "sumbisori," the whistling breath of Jeju haenyeo, Korea's legendary free-diving women. Start a dive when you want time away from your phone. While your phone rests, your ocean deepens, and sea creatures come to live in it. Who dives with Sumbi - Students who need a study timer for exams and deep focus - Anyone fighting phone addiction or doomscrolling - People who want to cut screen time and rebuild concentration - ADHD brains that need a gentle, visual reason to stay off the phone - Anyone who just wants to watch a calm ocean and breathe What makes Sumbi different 1. One dive = one focus session. Keep your phone down while the timer runs, and the dive succeeds. If you fail, nobody scolds you. 2. Your focus time becomes an ocean. Successful dives bring creatures from shallow water, deep water, even the abyss. 3. Collect and raise your sea creatures. The more you dive, the wider and deeper your ocean grows. 4. Gift creatures to your dive buddies. Focus is deeper together. 5. No ads, no noise. Sumbi never drags you back with notifications. Coming back is your choice. Study timer, pomodoro, or deep work Pick any length with the dial: a short pomodoro-style session or hours of exam prep. Every dive adds to your daily focus record. When haenyeo divers surface, they release a long whistling breath: "hooo-ee." Your day deserves a breath that deep. Have a good dive. Hoo-ee! Contact: sumbi@niceday.io
Commonplace
This app helps you retain information from books and audiobooks by prompting you to write down your thoughts after each chapter. It then asks you questions to reinforce learning and provides a summary of your notes when you finish.
- Chapter-based note-taking
- Active recall prompts
- Customizable questions
- End-of-book summaries
- Export notes (text/JSON)
- Ad-free experience
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Commonplace is for people who finish a book and cannot remember what was in it. It is not a highlighter and not a summary service. You write, in your own words, what stayed with you after a chapter. That is the whole ask — a few sentences, typed or dictated, while it is still fresh. It works the same for audiobooks. Listening is where things slip away fastest, because there is no page to flip back to — so pause after a chapter and say what you heard. THE EVENING AFTER Reading a summary changes nothing. Reaching for something you half-remember is what makes it stick. So the next evening, Commonplace asks you three questions about what you wrote — one to bring it back, one to argue with it, one to connect it to your own life. A day is the point: answers you can still see in front of you are not memories yet. QUESTIONS THAT FIT THE BOOK A business book makes claims you can test. A novel does not. Commonplace asks different questions of each — where an idea might break down, or where you did not believe a character's choice. WHEN YOU FINISH Mark a book done and Commonplace reads back through everything you wrote and hands you an account of what you made of it: what you kept returning to, where you contradicted yourself, what you raised once and never mentioned again. Built entirely from your notes, quoting your own sentences. It adds nothing about the book you did not write down yourself. YOUR WORDS STAY YOURS Your recaps are never rewritten. Everything you write can be exported as readable text or as JSON, any time, in two taps — and that keeps working whether or not you subscribe. Delete your account from inside the app and it is really deleted, not hidden. No ads. No analytics SDK. No tracking. Nothing sold to anyone. SUBSCRIPTION Your first book is on us — twenty recaps and one end-of-book account, enough to see the whole thing before deciding. After that Commonplace is a yearly or monthly subscription, priced in the App Store. Reading and exporting what you have already written stays free forever. Terms of use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is monetization model: Sumbi at free with in-app purchases against Commonplace's subscription. Commonplace's advantage is update cadence (daily vs every 9 days). On price, rating, review sentiment and ratings volume 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
Both are free to download. Sumbi sells 7 one-off in-app purchases and Commonplace sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $3.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 5.0 for Sumbi against 5.0 for Commonplace. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 1 and 1 respectively. Written reviews split almost evenly too, at 100% and 100% positive.
Sumbi ships an update every 9 days, Commonplace daily. The most recent releases landed on November 10, 2026 and October 31, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Sumbi | Commonplace |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (1 ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 1 | 1 |
| Update frequency | Every 9 days | Daily — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases — better | Subscription |
| Devices | iPhone | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 16.4 | 16.4 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 154 MB | 50 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | 나이스데이 | DK Data Science |
Customer experience
Sumbi
Commonplace
In-app purchases
Sumbi
- Haenyeo Fins$0.99
- Shallow Sea Creature$0.99
- Haenyeo Hat$1.99
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- Haenyeo Breath Bubbles$1.99
- Deep Sea Creature$1.99
- Haenyeo Wetsuit$2.99
- Abyssal Creature$2.99
Commonplace
- Commonplace Monthly$3.991 Month
- Commonplace Yearly$29.991 Year









