Tool finder

Which blocker is right for you?

Four questions, then three suggestions from the 41 tools we track, with the reason each one matched, so you can disagree with us.

Question 1 of 4What do you need to block on?

How to choose a blocker

The four questions above sort 41 tools on four axes, and they are not equally important. Roughly in the order that decides whether a tool survives its first bad week:

1. How hard it is to override

This is the axis people get wrong most often. A blocker you can dismiss in two taps is a blocker you will dismiss, because the moment you most want to override it is the moment your judgement about whether to override it is worst. Three broad tiers:

  • A pause, not a wall. One Sec, ScreenZen, Clearspace, Jomo, Roots and Intention interrupt the reach-for-the-phone reflex rather than preventing it, usually with a breathing delay or a friction screen before the app opens. They work by breaking automaticity, and they stop working once the delay stops registering as one.
  • Properly inconvenient. Freedom, AppBlock, Opal, BlockSite, Forest, Flora and Session put real cost in the way: a scheduled session, a block that syncs across every device at once, a timer you would have to visibly abandon.
  • Effectively impossible. Cold Turkey, SelfControl, LeechBlock NG and Focus are built so a block cannot be lifted once it starts, in some cases surviving a restart or an uninstall. Pick this tier only if you already know you talk your way past the other two.

The tier matters more than the brand. A gentle tool used consistently beats a locked one uninstalled in week two, but if you have already abandoned two gentle ones, that is itself the answer.

2. What is actually eating the time

Blocking the wrong surface is why people conclude blockers don’t work. Social feeds are a different problem from open browser tabs, and both are different from being unable to settle into anything at all.

  • Social feeds. One Sec, News Feed Eradicator, Unhook, ScreenZen, Opal and Jomo target the feed specifically. Several remove the scrolling surface while leaving the rest of the app usable, which matters if you still need messages.
  • Websites and news. StayFocusd, LeechBlock NG, Cold Turkey, BlockSite, Freedom and SelfControl work from a list of sites.
  • Apps in general. AppBlock, Opal, ScreenZen, Roots, Jomo and Minimalist Phone operate at the app layer rather than the browser.
  • Nothing specific. Forest, Session, Pomofocus, Focusmate, Tide, Endel and Noisli are not blockers at all. They structure attention rather than restrict access. If no single app is the culprit and you simply cannot settle, blocking a list of sites will not fix it, and this is the group to look at.

3. What you need it to cover

Platform eliminates more candidates than any other answer. Browser extensions such as StayFocusd, LeechBlock NG, News Feed Eradicator and Unhook cover one browser on one machine, which is enough if the problem is confined there and useless if the phone is the real issue. iOS constrains what third-party apps may do more tightly than desktop operating systems do, so several of the strictest desktop tools have no direct iPhone equivalent. If you answer “everything I own”, the field narrows to the handful that sync a single block across devices.

4. What you’re willing to spend

Several of the most restrictive options are free (SelfControl, LeechBlock NG and StayFocusd among them) so a paid tier is not a proxy for strictness. Paying generally buys cross-device sync, scheduling, and the ability to lock settings behind something you cannot casually undo. The hardware answer is a different decision entirely: it replaces or physically restricts the device rather than governing what runs on it, and it is worth considering only if software has already failed more than once.

What this tool will not tell you

The shortlist is a starting point, not a verdict. Matches are scored from the documented capabilities of each tool and from published research on what makes restriction stick, not from hands-on testing of every option, and the reasons behind each match are shown alongside it so you can disagree with the reasoning rather than take the ranking on trust. Prices and features change; where a figure appears on a tool’s own page it carries the month it was checked.