Unpluq vs Brick

Both put your distracting apps behind something you have to physically tap. One asks for a yearly fee, the other for $59 once.

By Ruslan Shchuchkin, who built PhoneStop · Last checked September 2026 · Read this page as Markdown

The short version

Choose Brick if you want to pay once and be done. A $59 puck, tap to lock, tap to unlock, no account fee ticking over. Leave the puck in another room and your apps are genuinely gone.

Choose Unpluq if you want the ecosystem and do not mind renting it. The Tag is around $79 with a year included, then roughly $35 a year, and the app around it is more configurable than Brick's.

Both work because the unlock is physical. The decision is one-time hardware versus a hardware subscription.

How each one stops you

Both are the same idea: a passive NFC tag or puck plus the operating system's blocking APIs. Your chosen apps stay blocked until you tap the phone on the physical object, which you are supposed to keep inconveniently far away.

Brick keeps it deliberately simple, tap on, tap off, one payment. Unpluq wraps the tag in more app-side options and barriers, and charges a subscription to keep it running. The physics are identical; the business models are not.

Where Unpluq wins

• More configurable app-side barriers and settings.
• A mature app with a longer track record on both platforms.
• The tag plus software is a complete, supported system.

Where Brick wins

• $59 once, with no subscription hanging over it.
• Dead simple: tap to brick, tap to unbrick.
• The apps vanish entirely while you are bricked.
• Cheaper over any span longer than a year.

A physical key only works on the days you carry it

Hardware is the strongest block in this whole category, because standing up to fetch a puck is a real cost. It is also the most fragile in one specific way: it does nothing on the day you leave the tag in your bag, or the puck in the drawer you are sitting next to, or when you simply tap it back on because you are the person who bought it. The object is the enforcement, and the object can always be reached.

PhoneStop needs no object. It gives the whole phone a daily budget that counts down wherever you are, warns you before it runs out, and puts a full-screen stop in front of you when it does, with a one-tap way to sit the urge out. It is free on Android, iPhone coming, and there is nothing to remember to carry.

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 September 2026 and change often, so check the vendor before you pay.