Comparison · checked August 2026

Focus Friend vs Stoiq

Focus Friend is the closest thing to Stoiq in spirit anywhere on this page: a kind little character who keeps you company while you focus. We admire it without reservation. The honest differences are where it lives — your phone, inside the app — and what happens when you slip, because the bean gets sad and nobody in Stoiq ever does.

See the tableWhich one should you pick?

Written by Stoiq. Every fact about Focus Friend below was read off their own site in August 2026 and is linked at the bottom of this page.

What Focus Friend is

The fair description.

Focus Friend is a focus timer with a bean in it. Start a session and the bean knits; finish and you earn socks to trade for furniture across a little multi-room house. Deep Focus Mode blocks distracting apps through Screen Time (and now on Android), a Live Activity keeps the timer on your lock screen, and the whole thing is free, with cosmetics and a small Pro subscription on top.

It topped the US App Store above ChatGPT and won Google Play's App of the Year, and the reviews all say the same word: kind. Hank Green built the gentlest mainstream focus app that exists, and it deserves the shelf space.

Side by side

The whole difference, in six rows.

WhatFocus FriendStoiq
How it worksA focus timer with a companion: start a session and the bean knits socks; completed sessions earn socks that buy furniture for the bean's rooms. Deep Focus Mode blocks distracting apps during sessions via Screen Time. Interrupt the timer and, in their words, the bean “drops its stitches and becomes really, really sad.”Say what you're working on and pick a length. A small companion sits in the corner of your Mac while the block runs. Drift to a distracting site and he checks in first — one tap takes you back to the sentence you left. Keep going and the page goes behind him until the block ends.
Where it runsiPhone and Android. The Live Activity puts the timer on the lock screen. No desktop app of any kind — the bean lives inside the app.macOS 14 or later, a Chrome companion, and iPhone. There is no Windows build and no Android build.
What it costsFree core with no card. Pro on the US App Store: $3.99 monthly, $19.99 yearly, $39.99 lifetime (a $29.99 welcome offer appears too). Bean skin packs run $2.99–$5.99.$79 once, and that is the end of it. There is a $7.99 a month plan if you would rather rent it. 30-day refund, no questions.
When you slipThe bean gets sad. It is the gentlest version of loss in the category — nothing dies and nothing resets — but disappointment is still the mechanism.Nothing dies. There is no streak to break, no score to keep and no chart of your worst week. Everything you have grown stays grown, and coming back after four days away costs you nothing at all.
Who's with youThe bean — a real character, present during the session, inside the app. Between sessions it is a room you visit rather than a creature who is around.A character with eyes, actually present while you work. He notices, he asks before he blocks, and he says nothing at all while you're on track.
Rent or ownFree, with an optional subscription or a one-time lifetime for Pro. Cosmetics are separate purchases.One payment. Nothing renews, nothing lapses, and there is nothing to cancel.

Focus Friend is a trademark of its owner and we have no affiliation with them. Their column describes their product in our words; where a number appears in it, the page it came from is linked below.

Which one

Sometimes the answer is theirs.

You are shopping, not being sold to. Here is the honest split, and the left-hand card is not a courtesy — if one of those lines is you, buy Focus Friend and get on with your afternoon.

Choose Focus Friend if

Focus Friend is your answer

  • Your focus problem lives on your phone. Focus Friend is phone-native and Stoiq is not.
  • You are on Android. Stoiq has no Android app and is not going to pretend otherwise.
  • You want the free option. Focus Friend's core is genuinely free, no card, no expiry — the most generous free tier on this page.
  • You love the bean, or you love Hank. Character attachment is the mechanism, and theirs is a very good character with a very good human behind it.
  • Decorating the rooms is the fun part for you. Stoiq deliberately has no currency and no shop for earned things, and if the sock economy delights you, ours will feel spare.

Choose Stoiq if

Stoiq is your answer

  • The work you are avoiding is on your Mac, in a browser tab — where a phone timer cannot see and a bean cannot follow.
  • You want a companion who lives on the desktop all day, not a character you visit inside an app.
  • You never want a sad face, even a gentle one. Nobody in Stoiq is ever disappointed in you — that is a design rule, not a mood.
  • You want the interruption itself: when a feed takes over, Stoiq climbs into the tab and offers the way back. Focus Friend blocks apps during a timer; it does not come to get you.
  • You want help deciding what to do with the day, not only a timer — the morning question, one next step, and progress that is recorded when you keep your place.

The difference underneath

Everything else stands in your way.

Every tool in this category works by standing between you and the thing you were about to do. It blocks the site, it charges you a breath, it locks the machine, or it kills something you grew. All of that works, and some of it works very well.

Stoiq is the one with somebody in it. A small companion sits in the corner of your Mac while the block runs, notices when the scroll starts, and asks first — because sometimes the tab is the work. Nothing you have grown ever dies, there is no streak to break and no score to keep, and coming back after four days away costs you nothing at all.

That is not a feature list. It is the reason people still have it installed in week three.

Join

Own it once. Nothing renews.

$79, once — you’re in as a Day One. The Mac app, the browser companion, iPhone, and every character we ever make. Nothing lapses and there is nothing to cancel.

The longer case for Stoiq

$79once · no subscription

Stoiq for Mac, yours for good.

It takes $50 off. Lifetime for $29.

Payment is handled by Stripe. We never see your card. Your receipt arrives by email.

The small print

Where these facts came from.

Snapshot checked August 2026. Every claim about Focus Friend on this page was read from the pages listed below on that date. Prices and platforms change, and theirs may have changed since. If you find something here that is out of date or unfair, write to hello@stoiq.ai and we will fix it — that goes for Focus Friend too.

Prices are shown as their own site shows them, in the currency it shows them in, and several of these companies price differently by region. Check the number on their page before you buy anything.

We are not affiliated with Focus Friend and this page is not endorsed by them. Their name is used here to identify their product, which is the only reason it appears.

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