Countdown by Holiday Extras vs Vacation Countdown
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Countdown by Holiday Extras
Stay excited for your upcoming trips with a customizable countdown. Add your own photos, use smart packing lists, and share your anticipation with friends and family. Track multiple events and enjoy an ad-free experience.
- Home screen widget
- AI-powered packing checklist
- Customizable backgrounds
- Countdown to any event
- Multiple countdown tracking
- Suggested and recurring events
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Make the wait feel like part of the adventure. Turn every holiday, birthday, wedding, festival and big day into a beautiful live countdown — with photos, widgets, reminders, social sharing and smarter trip planning built in. COUNT DOWN TO ANYTHING See the days, hours, minutes and seconds tick away in a beautifully simple, full-screen countdown. Keep every moment together in a grid of photo cards, then swipe between upcoming countdowns or revisit the good times in Past. MAKE IT YOURS Choose a favourite photo, position and crop it perfectly for the countdown and its widget, or pick one of our colourful backgrounds. Light and dark appearances follow your iPhone automatically. CREATE WITH PIÑATA MAGIC On supported iPhones, Piñata Magic uses Apple Intelligence on your device to make setup feel effortless. Tell Piñata what you’re looking forward to in your own words, or start with a screenshot of a booking. It can suggest the event, dates, trip details, flights and a useful reminder schedule — and everything stays editable before you create it. PLAN HOLIDAYS FASTER The guided holiday flow keeps dates, airports and flights clear from start to finish. Search real flights, choose a simple outbound and return journey, and see whether each result is a prediction, a potential match from your screenshot or a confirmed flight. KEEP THE EXCITEMENT CLOSE Add beautiful Home Screen and Lock Screen widgets so the next big moment is always in sight. Choose milestone, weekly, daily or custom reminders, scheduled privately on your iPhone, and let the app move naturally from counting down to “On holiday now” and “Welcome home”. SHARE THE COUNTDOWN Turn your countdown and photo into an eye-catching social post. Share a story, portrait post or square image through Instagram, Facebook, Messages and your other favourite apps — complete with days, hours, minutes and seconds, not just the number of days. SMASH THE PIÑATA When a birthday reaches zero, the celebration takes over the whole screen. Tap or shake the Piñata until it bursts open, then watch the confetti and sweets tumble out. It’s the most fun you can have waiting for a birthday. READY FOR HOLIDAY EXTRAS Add your holiday to Holiday Extras without retyping the dates and flight details. Open the trip in the Holiday Extras app when you’re ready to keep everything together and add airport parking, hotels, lounges and more. PRIVATE BY DESIGN Your countdowns, photos and reminder schedules are stored on your device. Piñata Magic processes your request on-device using Apple Intelligence. You can create and enjoy countdowns without connecting a Holiday Extras account. Whatever you’re looking forward to, make every day before it count.
Vacation Countdown
Visually track your upcoming trips with a beautiful countdown timer. Get daily reminders and share your excitement with friends and family. This app also offers a home screen widget for at-a-glance updates.
- Vacation countdown timer
- Home screen widget
- Daily trip reminders
- Easy sharing with friends
- Offline functionality
- Beautiful background images
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Simple, elegant design shows you how long until your upcoming big vacation with beautiful background images. There is also a widget to track your countdown on your home screen. Daily notifications remind you how long until your trip. • Easy share your vacation countdown with friends and family • Post your vacation countdown to Facebook with one click • Works offline • Countless beautiful background images • Great to use as wallpapers • Great for tracking any trip big or small! Please email us or leave review feedback for feature requests or any other improvement suggestions you have for Vacation Countdown. We love to hear from you and are always looking to improve our Vacation Countdown app! Please share Countdown Timer app with your friends and family! End User License Agreement: https://zaffles.bitbucket.io/vacationCountdown/terms_of_use.html Thanks! Team Zaffles
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Countdown by Holiday Extras at none against Vacation Countdown 's 4. Countdown by Holiday Extras also leads on ads (none vs shown). Vacation Countdown 's advantage is ratings volume (1.1K vs 65) and iOS requirement (17.6 vs 26.0). On price, rating, review sentiment and update cadence 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. Vacation Countdown sells 4 in-app purchases, starting at $0.99 per month. Countdown by Holiday Extras asks for nothing beyond the download.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.6 for Countdown by Holiday Extras against 4.8 for Vacation Countdown . That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Vacation Countdown has 1.1K ratings behind it against 65, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews are what separate them: 53% of Countdown by Holiday Extras's written reviews are positive against 50% of Vacation Countdown 's.
Both ship on a similar rhythm, roughly weekly. The most recent releases landed on October 24, 2026 and October 25, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Countdown by Holiday Extras | Vacation Countdown |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.6 (65 ratings) | 4.8 (1.1K ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 53.0% of reviews — better | 50.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 65 | 1.1K — better |
| Update frequency | Weekly | Weekly |
| Ads | No — better | Yes |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | Free — better | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad — better | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 26.0 | 17.6 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 22 MB | 220 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | +4 |
| Developer | Holiday Extras | Zaffles |
Customer experience
Countdown by Holiday Extras
Vacation Countdown
Bugs and requests
Countdown by Holiday Extras
Reported bugs
122 issues- App won't open after update
- App crashes on opening
- Widget not updating
- App deleted all trips
- App crashed and doesn't store new trips
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- Past vacations showing in countdown
- App not working after upgrade
- Countdown notifications incorrect
- App crashes frequently
- Photos deleted after updates
- Countdown disappears
- Image on countdown wiped
- App resets
- Cannot edit countdowns
- Countdown goes from days to years
- Past travels photos lost
- Active countdown images lost on update
- App doesn't open or takes many attempts
- Cannot see whole picture on screen
- Time zone issues
- New version too 'bawdy'
- Banners are distracting
- Lost all past information
- Past events separated from upcoming events
- Have to re-upload photos
- App no longer user friendly
- Images for past events not editable
- App deleted all my trips
- Widget doesn't count down
- App no longer opens since February updates
- Notifications show incorrect days
- Past vacations showing in countdown
- App completely stopped working after upgrade
- New layout is confusing
- Editing is not easy
- New app is awful
- New view is rubbish
- Older version was more beneficial
- App has become more complicated
- Look is a lot worse
- Separated events that have happened and what hasn't yet
- Taken away all photos for events
- Have to tap on different events instead of swiping
- Photos from events have been wiped
- Cannot see the whole picture on my screen
- Time zone issues
- New version too bawdy
- Banners across the bottom of the screen are distracting
- Holiday extras and banner for sharing are unnecessary
- New layout terrible
- Lost all past information
- All holidays have gone
- Revamp is terrible
- Cannot edit a countdown anymore
- Latest update ruined the app
- Updating loses all photos
- New update is awful
- Full page countdown and swiping gone
- New screen with multiple icons is awful
- All countdowns set with photos gone
- Years of countdowns now boring
- Not great since update
- No pictures included in app
- Unable to upload own photos
- Cannot scroll through dates as used to
- New format is confusing
- Do not like new format and view
- Editing not easy
- Old layout was far better
- New app is awful
- New view is rubbish
- Older version was much more beneficial
- Screen full of dates
- App has now made the app so much more complicated
- Look is a lot worse
- Separated the events that have happened and what hasn’t yet
- Taken away all of the photos for your events
- Made it so you have to tap on the different events instead of just having them immediately on your screen to swipe through
- All my photos from events have been wiped
- Images for past events cannot be edited back in
- All my photos have been taken off
- Have to update them all over again
- Cannot see the whole picture on my screen
- Time zone issues
- New version of countdown is too bawdy
- Banners across the bottom of the screen are distracting
- Holiday extras and banner for sharing is unnecessary
- New layout terrible
- Lost all past information
- All my holidays have gone
- Revamp is terrible
- Cannot edit a countdown anymore
- Latest update ruined the app
- Updating loses all photos
- New update is awful
- Full page countdown and swiping gone
- New screen with multiple icons is awful
- All my countdowns set with photos gone
- Years of countdowns now boring
- Not great since update
- No pictures included in app
- Unable to upload my own
- Cannot scroll through the dates as used to
- New format quite confusing
- Do not like your new format and view
- Editing not easy
- Old layout was far better
- New app is awful
- New view is rubbish
- Older version was much more beneficial
- Screen full of dates
- App has now made the app so much more complicated
- Look is a lot worse
- Separated the events that have happened and what hasn’t yet
- Taken away all of the photos for your events
- Made it so you have to tap on the different events instead of just having them immediately on your screen to swipe through
- All my photos from events have been wiped
- Images for past events cannot be edited back in
- All my photos have been taken off
- Have to update them all over again
- App won't allow display on front screen
- Logo for 'holiday extras' obstructs photo when sharing
Requested features
9 requests- Automatically add holidays (Christmas, Halloween, New Year's Eve/Day)
- Widgets update time remaining without opening app
- Add a checklist for holidays
- Option to revert to old layout
- Sync across devices
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- More notification options
- Ability to keep past events with photos
- Dark mode
- Improved time zone handling
Vacation Countdown
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Countdown by Holiday Extras
No in-app purchases
Vacation Countdown
- Vacation Supporter/Monthly$0.991 Month
- Vacation Supporter/Annual$6.991 Year
- Vacation Countdown Lifetime$2.99
- Vacation Countdown Lifetime$7.99
Questions
Is Countdown by Holiday Extras free?
Is Vacation Countdown free?
Which has better reviews, Countdown by Holiday Extras or Vacation Countdown ?
Do Countdown by Holiday Extras or Vacation Countdown have ads?
Which is updated more often, Countdown by Holiday Extras or Vacation Countdown ?
Other comparisons
