Comparison

MOVE! Coach vs Alison

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

Head to head
About

MOVE! Coach

This 16-week program guides users to successful weight loss or management through education and tools. Monitor, track, and receive feedback on progress with weight, diet, and exercise goals. It offers self-management modules, tracking tools, and support resources.

Highlights
  • 16-week guided weight loss program
  • Self-management modules with videos and games
  • Daily weight tracking and progress reports
  • Goal setting and SMART goal features
  • Stress management tools
  • Identification of support resources
  • HealthKit integration for data syncing
Features
Read full description

MOVE! Coach Mobile is a weight loss app for Veterans, service members, their families, and others who want to lose weight. This 16-week program guides users to successful weight loss or weight management through education, and use of tools, in an easy and convenient way. Users can monitor, track, and receive feedback regarding their progress with weight, diet, and exercise goals. Some Key Features: Self-Management Modules – Educate users on a variety of weight-management success strategies using videos, worksheets, games, and other tools. Modules are made available weekly based on your progression through the 16-week program. Tracker – Assists users to track weight daily, set weight loss and SMART goals, and see progress reports and summaries Tools – Provides users with calculation tools and tools to manage stress Support – Helps users identify supports and resources for successful weight loss This app can be used by itself, but additional benefit may be achieved if used in combination with treatment with your healthcare provider and by tracking health & fitness activity with third-party HealthKit compatible apps. If you’re just starting out, MOVE! Coach can access your existing HealthKit height and weight data, and synchronize your progress recording weight entries with Apple’s Health app. MOVE! Coach Mobile was created by the National Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention (NCP), under VHA’s Office of Patient Care Services.

About

Alison

Track headaches, meals, water, and sleep with this personal journal. It offers observational insights into potential patterns without diagnosing or forecasting. Data remains on your device for privacy.

Highlights
  • Start and stop headache logging
  • Log meals with ingredients
  • Track water and sleep intake
  • Optional Apple Watch integration
  • Read-only Apple Health integration
  • Optional weather data
  • Generate clinic letters
Features
Read full description

Alison is a personal headache journal. Headache on? Tap Start. Headache over? Tap Stop. Log meals, water, and sleep as they happen. The journal is what you wrote. Nothing more. Alison is not a medical device. It does not diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent migraine or any condition. It does not forecast. Talk to a clinician about symptoms. No account. No ads. No tracking. Your journal stays on your device. Pairs are observational. When the same thing has shown up with three of your migraine days, Alison shows a note. That is what has shown up together. It is not a cause. It is not a forecast. It is not a trigger test. Free download. Keep is a monthly subscription through Apple: 1-month free trial for new subscribers, then $0.99/month (local price varies). For the first 24 hours after you first open Alison, nothing waits on Keep. The journal stays readable without Keep. After the first 24 hours, new Start, Food, and Health pull need Keep. When the trial or Keep ends, those services end. Restore on the Keep screen. Cancel in Apple Subscriptions. WHAT YOU CAN DO • Start and Stop a headache • Log meals with ingredients. Search, scan a barcode, or type. Open Food Facts supplies the ingredients. Not a trigger test. • Log water and sleep. Water in ml or oz: you choose under Units. • Optional Apple Watch: Start and intensity • Optional Apple Health: read-only. Alison reads food, water, sleep, menstrual flow, caffeine, and alcohol, only what you allow on Apple's sheet. Deny and the journal still works. • Optional weather: tap Resample for a pressure and humidity forecast from MET Norway (the Norwegian Meteorological Institute). It is a forecast estimate, not a measurement, and it does not diagnose anything. If the weather feed is unavailable, the journal still works. Deny location and the journal still works. Based on data from MET Norway. Values are grouped and simplified by Alison. • Clinic letter: after 5 episodes, 8 meals, and 7 days, share, copy, or save a PDF of what you logged to hand to your clinician. It restates your log. It is not a diagnosis. WHAT ALISON DOES NOT DO • Diagnose • Forecast a migraine • Give medical advice • Replace a clinician • Show ads • Upload your journal to Night Orders ON YOUR PHONE • Alison has no account and no Alison server. Your journal, food log, symptom entries and photos stay on your device, and we do not collect them. Alison 1.2 does not sync through iCloud. • We do not sell your data, use it for ads, or track you across apps or sites. • Weather is optional and only runs when you tap Resample, never in the background. Your phone rounds your location to about 11 km (7 miles) and sends it directly to MET Norway in Oslo, Norway. MET Norway receives your IP address with the request, as any web server does. Night Orders Studio LLC does not receive or store your location. • Food lookups send your search text or barcode to Open Food Facts, which sees your network address when called. No journal rows are sent. Details: nightorders.app/privacy-alison.html • Deleting the app deletes the journal on the phone. Support: support@nightorders.app Site: https://nightorders.app Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://nightorders.app/privacy-alison.html

Screenshots

MOVE! Coach4 screens
Alison4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is rating: Alison at 5.0 against MOVE! Coach's 4.2. Alison also leads on update cadence (every 9 days vs every 3 months) and device support (4 vs 1). MOVE! Coach's advantage is monetization model (free vs free with in-app purchases) and ratings volume (515 vs 1). On price, ads, in-app purchases and iOS requirement 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.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

Alison holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.2. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: MOVE! Coach has 515 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

MOVE! Coach ships an update every 3 months, Alison every 9 days. The most recent releases landed on October 24, 2026 and October 14, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard5 real differences · 5 level
MOVE! Coach versus Alison: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterMOVE! CoachAlison
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.2 (515 ratings)5.0 (1 ratings) — better
Positive reviews21.0% of reviews—
Number of ratings515 — better1
Update frequencyEvery 3 monthsEvery 9 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationFree — betterFree with in-app purchases
DevicesiPhoneiPhone, iPad, iPod, Apple Watch — better
Requires iOS16.015.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size95 MB16 MB
Age rating4+12+
DeveloperUS Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)Paturious Grey

Customer experience

MOVE! Coach

All ratings497 ratings
Positive79.9%
Neutral6.4%
Negative13.7%
Written reviews62 reviews
Positive21.0%
Neutral19.4%
Negative59.7%

Alison

All ratings1 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

Bugs and requests

MOVE! Coach

Reported bugs

46 issues
  • Half screen taken by crisis support
  • Scrolling one line at a time
  • Food entry errors (e.g., 190 calories showing as 1400)
  • Cannot enter smaller increments of time for activities
  • Difficulty editing recipes
Show 41 more
  • No back button to change or edit entries
  • Cannot see entire option when entering food
  • Cannot delete added food entries
  • No way to back up, requires closing and reopening app
  • Squished interface on iPhone
  • Screens with no way to exit or submit answers (e.g., goal weight)
  • Cannot report problems
  • Apple Watch Health data not loading directly
  • Weight data reset after 6 months
  • Graph not working properly (only shows two days)
  • App does not function on iPhone 15 Pro Max
  • App breaks at week 12 chapter 2, repeatedly shuts down
  • No diet or exercise tracker found
  • Cannot get past EULA prompt
  • Crashes during modules, data lost upon restart
  • Cannot unlock Module 16
  • Cannot add height/weight to proceed
  • Dark selections, barely readable
  • Difficult to navigate
  • Cannot see information when setting up (height, age)
  • App crashes during Week 2, Chapter 2
  • Cannot go back to add foods from previous day
  • App crashes when trying to enter food info
  • App crashes regularly on iPhone 6s Plus
  • App closes when clicking on Self Assessment Guide Week 2
  • Cannot see custom item entry screen (number entry in the way)
  • App not updated for nearly a year
  • Weekly diet report annoying
  • App charges double calories for almond milk
  • Entering recipes assumes whole recipe is one serving
  • Favorites function is useless
  • Cannot manually enter calories
  • Food categories don't match package labels
  • Difficult to find specific foods
  • App crashes too much
  • Diet and activity logs removed in updates
  • Module 16 cannot be unlocked
  • Cannot see information on screen
  • Week 2 crashes the whole app
  • Cannot change date for dietary entries
  • Exercise calorie count is generic and inaccurate

Requested features

16 requests
  • Barcode scanner for food
  • Integration with other health apps (Apple Health, MyFitnessPal, Fitbit)
  • Ability to edit previous entries/dates
  • More conversational serving sizes
  • Allow smaller increments of time for activities
Show 11 more
  • Sync data from other health apps
  • Update app for newer iPhones
  • Improve search function for food tracker
  • QR scanner for food
  • Link to MyFitnessPal
  • Customizable exercise calorie counts (incline, speed)
  • Ability to edit recipe entries
  • Add missing foods
  • Sync with My Healthy Vet
  • Dark mode option
  • Ability to report bugs directly

Alison

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

In-app purchases

None

MOVE! Coach

No in-app purchases

None

Alison

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is MOVE! Coach free?
MOVE! Coach is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Alison free?
Alison is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, MOVE! Coach or Alison?
Alison is rated higher. MOVE! Coach averages 4.2 out of 5 from 515 ratings, while Alison averages 5.0 from 1 ratings.
Do MOVE! Coach or Alison have ads?
Neither MOVE! Coach nor Alison shows ads.
Which is updated more often, MOVE! Coach or Alison?
MOVE! Coach ships an update every 3 months, and Alison every 9 days. Most recently, MOVE! Coach was updated on October 24, 2026 and Alison on October 14, 2026.

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