Upchin vs AppBlock

It blocks from the watch; we block from the Home Screen

AppBlock starts a block from the watch; Upchin, from the Home Screen, with the Express widget. Apple's compatibility section lists watchOS 10 beside the iPhone and the iPad, three watch screenshots sit on the listing, and what they show is a quick block you start and stop on your wrist, plus a timer. Our watch shows numbers; theirs acts. That is a choice: the apps you want to get away from open on the Home Screen, and that is where we put the button. And since AppBlock also has a Home Screen widget, it gives you more than we do here: that is where the page starts.

AppBlock also documents what it cannot do: their help centre carries a page titled what AppBlock can and cannot block on iPhone, and it is a list of limits. Few publishers in this field print that page at all — and it is what makes almost every row below checkable against their own material. The table carries the date it was checked.

What AppBlock has that Upchin does not

It has a free tier, kept indefinitely, with real blocking in it. On a subscription, Upchin is free and fully featured for 7 days; then it is paid, and you can cancel at any time.

It has a widget that starts a block. None of their help pages documents it; their own App Store screenshots do — the eighth, captioned "Handy widgets", shows an AppBlock Quick Block widget with a Start button sitting on a Home Screen. On this row AppBlock matches us outright.

Its strict mode is deeper than ours. It stops you turning blocks off, editing schedules or deleting the app, and you choose how to get out: a waiting delay, a timer, following the schedules, approval from a trusted person, a PIN, or plugging the phone into a charger. On top of that come switches to forbid app removal, new installs and clock changes.

Their help centre adds something it would have been easy to leave out: the Emergency Unblocking flow cannot be disabled in the app's settings, by design, as a safety net. We say this without a sneer, because it is the same trade we make — Upchin's Schedule slots cannot be cancelled either, they are interrupted for five minutes and then resume on their own. Neither of us ships a door with no handle.

It reaches more devices. iOS 17 where we ask for iOS 26 — a choice we stand by, and one that costs you something if your phone is a few years old — plus the iPad, Android, and extensions for Chrome, Edge, Brave and Safari on the desktop. And it does keyword blocking in Safari, which we do not.

A place you marked, a quota you spend — or what you are doing

AppBlock has two ways to fire a block. Its location schedules block when you arrive somewhere you pinned — office, school, library — using iOS region monitoring, and their documentation is honest about how unreliable that has been since iOS 18. Its Open Limit gives you a number of opens a day, each capped in length. Their documentation describes arriving and counting down; it does not describe moving.

Motion lock has no map and no pin. GPS confirms displacement of more than 5 metres and only counts it when the margin of error on the reading is smaller than that distance, so indoor drift does not block you while you sit still. When the walk is real, the apps close — on a street you have never set foot in, with nothing configured in advance.

Delay Lock counts nothing down. On every opening you get a short grace period, then the door closes for the length you chose and reopens on its own; next time, it starts again. A quota is spent once and for all; this one is never spent.

A place to pin, a quota to calibrate, a strict mode to arm: each asks for a decision taken in advance and held to afterwards. These two are set once, calmly, and then fire by themselves: an app you open, a step you take. Nothing is asked of you at the moment it matters.

If your distraction has an address, their zones are the better tool. If it arrives on the way, it does not have one.

A lock that holds when nothing is running

AppBlock has an allow list: you choose what stays reachable and everything else goes. Two limits — it is Premium, and it is a mode you switch on inside a schedule or a quick block, not a standing state of the phone. Upchin's "everything except" lock holds outside any rule or schedule, with nothing running, and it has a cost we print in our own app: it blocks web pages inside apps too, and our text tells you not to use the mode if that is too much.

This is where their frankness helps us be exact: AppBlock does not block web pages inside apps. They say it twice — links opened in Instagram or Twitter go through in-app browsers that bypass site blocking — and they add that a page may show briefly before the block lands. Their adult filter therefore does not cover those browsers.

And private browsing is often read backwards. AppBlock does not disable it: their documentation says the opposite — private or incognito browsing may bypass blocking, especially in less common browsers — and neither of their two limitation pages claims otherwise.

Privacy, and the languages

AppBlock keeps the important part local: your usage statistics and your blocking rules are stored and evaluated on your device, their policy says so plainly, and Screen Time tokens cannot be turned back into app names by them or their servers. A backup, if you switch one on, is the documented exception.

It is on the App Store label that we part. AppBlock's declares identifiers used to track you across apps and websites owned by other companies, with third-party advertising among the purposes, and their policy names Firebase Analytics, Firebase Crashlytics, the Meta SDK, Singular, RevenueCat and Superwall. They are explicit: it is advertising measurement, subject to Apple's tracking permission, and refusing it changes nothing about the blocking. A declared purpose says what those identifiers may be used for; it is not proof that the app shows ads. Upchin's label declares no tracking and nothing linked to your identity.

AppBlock ships in sixteen languages, Upchin in twenty-one.

The short version

AppBlock is free to start, acts from your wrist, and tells you exactly what it cannot do. That is a lot, and the table shows it on several rows.

AppBlock if you want to act from your watch, start without paying, or lock the phone behind six ways out — and if your device does not go up to iOS 26.

Upchin if you want a block that starts from walking rather than from a pin on a map, a web lock that holds when nothing is running, a filter that covers web pages inside apps too, and a privacy label with no tracking on it.