More profiles to configure
is more places to fail.

AppBlock is the most configurable blocker in its category. It's built around profiles, preset blocking scenarios you can trigger by time, location, or Wi-Fi network, so work, study, sleep, and family dinner can each run their own rules automatically.

Fella isn't trying to be a system. There's no profile to build for each part of your day. Selected apps stay blocked, all day, and the only way in is the same 5-minute emergency unlock, gone the moment it runs out.

Pricing follows the same split. AppBlock's free tier caps you at 4-hour Quick Blocks, 2 profiles, one-day schedules, and a 12-hour Strict Mode ceiling, with Premium removing those limits. Fella is one plan, $9.99 a month or $34.99 a year with a 3-day free trial, with nothing held back behind a higher tier. Both run on Apple's Screen Time framework. What differs is how much you're asked to build versus how much is already decided.

Profiles are AppBlock's core idea. Instead of one blocking state, you build separate rule sets for different contexts, each with its own apps, schedule, and trigger. A location trigger can turn a profile on when you arrive somewhere, a Wi-Fi trigger can do the same when you join a specific network.

Strict Mode is the layer meant to stop you from undoing it all. It adds a cooldown of two to ten minutes before you can turn it off, a timer lock that holds your settings for a set duration like a week, or partner approval that requires someone else to unlock it. All three are opt-in, and none of them are how AppBlock behaves by default.

Pomodoro integration adds a work-break rhythm on top. A built-in timer structure syncs blocking sessions with focus and break intervals, which is a genuinely useful layer for structured work, but it's one more setting alongside the profiles, schedules, and Strict Mode options already in play.

Fella replaces all of that with one decision. Pick your apps once. There's no profile to assign them to, no trigger to configure, no Strict Mode to remember to arm before the moment you'll actually need it.

Usage-based schedules depend on the system reporting correctly. A documented issue lets apps get miscounted as still "in use" if you navigate away without force-closing them, which can throw off schedules that key off usage time.

Location and Wi-Fi triggers depend on signals outside the app's control. Background location changes introduced with iOS 18 made location-based triggers fire unreliably for a stretch, sometimes not activating a profile until the app itself was opened. Later iOS updates reportedly improved this, but it can still misbehave on some devices.

Scale introduces its own limit. Once a schedule spans more than roughly 50 apps across all profiles, blocking can become inconsistent. None of this makes AppBlock unusual, since every third-party blocker on iOS runs on the same underlying framework and shares its constraints. It just means the more automation and configuration a system has, the more places a mismatch between plan and reality can slip through.

Fella has one state to keep working: blocked. No trigger to fire, no profile to activate, no usage count to get wrong. Fewer parts means fewer ways for the day to go differently than planned.

No system to build before it works. AppBlock rewards the person willing to set up profiles, schedules, and triggers correctly. Fella works the moment you pick your apps, with nothing left half-configured.

No opt-in step between you and real enforcement. Strict Mode only holds if you turn it on, and the free tier caps how long it lasts. Fella's block isn't a setting you activate. It's the only mode the app has.

Nothing depends on your location or your Wi-Fi being read correctly. A trigger is one more thing that can fail silently. Fella doesn't need to detect anything about where you are to stay blocked.

AppBlock fits people who want a system, not a switch. If different parts of your day genuinely call for different rules, and you're willing to build and maintain profiles, schedules, and triggers to get there, its flexibility is the whole point.

Fella fits people who don't want to manage a system at all. If setting up multiple profiles just becomes one more thing to configure around, or if you've caught yourself never actually arming Strict Mode when it mattered, a single rule that's already on removes that step entirely.

The difference is maintenance, not intent. Both apps are trying to keep you off distracting apps. AppBlock asks you to keep building the system that does it. Fella just does it.