Brick vs Freedom

A $59 magnet against a subscription. One makes the undo physical, the other makes it synchronised — and they fail in completely different ways.

Last checked August 2026 · Read this page as Markdown

The short version

Buy Brick if you have already defeated software. If you have installed three blockers and tapped through all three, the missing ingredient is not a better app, it is distance. Brick puts your apps behind a physical puck, and if the puck is in a kitchen drawer, getting them back means standing up.

Subscribe to Freedom if the problem is spread across devices and you would rather schedule it than carry it. Freedom blocks on the laptop, the phone and the tablet from one session, which no piece of hardware does.

The tie-breaker is honesty about your own failure mode. Brick's power evaporates the moment the puck is in your pocket, and Freedom's evaporates the moment you decide a session was a bad idea. Pick the one whose weakness you are least likely to exploit.

How each one stops you

Brick is a passive NFC tag and an app. You tap the phone on the puck to brick it, your chosen apps disappear — icons, notifications, everything — and they stay gone until you tap the puck again. There is no code, no timer to wait out and no in-app override, which is the entire design. It is also a one-time $59 with no subscription.

Freedom is a scheduler with an account behind it. You build blocklists, you start a session or let one start itself, and the block applies everywhere you are signed in. Locked Mode is the version that will not let you end a session early. Nothing is physical, so nothing has to be carried, and nothing has to be found again.

The real difference is where the undo lives: in a drawer, or in your account.

Where Brick wins

• The strongest friction available, provided the puck is genuinely out of reach.
• $59 once. No renewal, ever.
• Blocked apps vanish completely, notifications included — not a grey icon with a timer on it.
• Nothing to configure in the moment. Tap on, tap off.
• It works on both platforms, and the tag itself has no battery.

Where Freedom wins

• It covers the laptop too, which a phone puck cannot.
• Nothing to carry, and nothing to lose.
• Schedules run themselves, so it works on the evenings you forgot to plan for.
• Far more granular: per-site, per-app, per-device, per-time.
• Locked Mode gives you most of Brick's commitment without the object.

Neither of them has an opinion about how much is enough

Look at what these two actually disagree about: how hard the undo should be. Brick says put it in another room. Freedom says put it behind a subscription setting. It is a real argument and both answers are defensible.

Now look at what neither of them says. Neither product will ever tell you that today was five hours. Brick is binary — you are bricked or you are not — and Freedom is a schedule, which is a rule about when, not about how much. You can use either one faithfully for a year, hit every session, and end the year with exactly the screen time you started with, because the hours simply moved to the times and apps that were not covered.

A budget is the other kind of tool. PhoneStop gives the whole phone one number for the day, every app spends from it, and it counts down whether or not you planned anything. You get told at roughly sixty, thirty and ten minutes left, inside whatever app you happen to be in, and at zero the screen is taken over. Free, no account, no hardware.

It also pairs with either of these rather than replacing them: Brick for the evenings you want gone entirely, a budget for the ordinary Tuesdays in between.

Disclosure: we make PhoneStop, so treat our own entry with the scepticism it deserves. Everything else here is written from public information and hands-on use; prices and platforms were checked in August 2026 and change often — check the vendor before you pay.