An alternative to I Am Sober

Updated 2 September 2026

• I Am Sober's model is a counter, a daily pledge and a community; the alternative here shares none of the three.
• Switch if the reset is the part that has repeatedly cost you a fortnight, not because a different app is better.
• Do not switch if the community is what has kept you going. Nothing here replaces it and pretending otherwise would be a poor trade.
• A pledge is a promise about a day. A plan is an instruction about a situation. The second is easier to keep because it needs nothing from you at the time.
• I Am Sober is free to start; Mini Breaks is not free at all. If cost is the deciding factor, that settles it.
• Both are on iPhone. Only one of them is also on Android, and it is not this one.

The three parts, taken one at a time

The counter. This is the part most people are looking to leave. It works while it works and it fails on the day it is most needed, because a total is the one kind of feedback that can be lost. If you have watched a reset turn a single evening into a fortnight, that is not a failure of attention — it is the mechanic working as designed.

The pledge. A daily promise is a genuinely useful device and it has a specific weakness: it is a commitment about a period, made in the morning, to be kept in the evening by a different version of you with less in reserve. A plan attached to a situation asks for nothing at the time. The morning version does the deciding once and the evening version only has to follow an instruction.

The community. This is the part with no replacement here, and it would be dishonest to imply otherwise. If other people are what has kept it going, leaving for an app with nobody in it is a bad trade whatever else changes.

What the different model actually is

You name the thing, then a situation it happens in — when you sit down after dinner, when you get in the car on your own, when it is late and you are still up. For that situation you decide beforehand what you will do instead. That pair is the unit, and the plan is a set of them.

It works on one at a time. Covering four situations at once means four chances a day to find that this one had no plan, and the first time that happens the whole thing stops describing your life. The rest stay named and come in as the first goes quiet, so the plan gets bigger rather than harder.

Two questions a day: did it come up, and how much did you want to. Those are deliberately two rather than one, because a day where nothing happened and a day you spent wanting it are completely different days and a single yes or no cannot tell them apart.

What is missing, said plainly

No community, no other people, no sharing of any kind. No free tier — the week's trial is on the yearly plan only, and the monthly plan has none. No Android and no web version. No figure for money saved, and no health timeline. English only.

There is also nothing to migrate. You cannot bring a day count across, because there is nowhere to put it, and that is the point rather than an oversight.

What replaces the number on the main screen

The situation that is coming next and the plan you made for it, plus one button that says something is coming up. That button gives you your own plan for the situation you are in and nothing else — it is never counted, never reported back to you, and never mentioned again. It is the only thing in the app that helps while something is actually happening, and the moment it felt measured it would stop being used.

The fortnightly read is a description rather than a score: how much of the week is covered, how loud it still is, which days are the hard ones.

Who should stay where they are

If the count is motivating rather than frightening, stay. If the community is load bearing, stay. If you need it on Android, stay — there is no version of this for you. If free matters, stay, because I Am Sober is free to download, with in-app purchases and this is not.

The people this suits are the ones who have already done several attempts, know the exact shape of the day it goes wrong, and want a tool that responds to that day by changing a plan rather than by changing a number.

This page is published by Mini Breaks, which makes a competing app, so read it with that in mind. Prices, platforms and mechanics above were read from each app’s own UK App Store listing on 2 September 2026 and are recorded with their sources. They change without notice, and nothing here is a judgement about how well any of them works. Check the App Store for what each does today.