The only blocker
that actually blocks.

Opal is built to be tuned. Deep Focus sessions, custom schedules, strictness levels you dial up or down depending on the day. That flexibility is the whole pitch, and it's also the catch. Every mode you can turn on, you can also turn off, and on the days your willpower runs thin, that's exactly the door you'll walk through.

Fella doesn't give you a door. There's one mode: blocked. You get exactly one 5-minute unlock per session, and it locks itself back up the moment that time is gone. No dashboard to open, no session to end early, nothing to talk yourself into.

Setup follows the same idea. Opal asks you to choose a mode, a schedule, and a strictness level before you can start. Fella asks you to pick your apps, once, then gets out of your way. Both run on Apple's own Screen Time framework, and Fella costs $9.99 a month or $34.99 a year with a 3-day free trial. The technical ceiling is the same. What differs is how much of it you're handed to manage yourself.

Opal actually offers three difficulty levels, and the top one isn't a gimmick. Normal sessions can be cancelled anytime. Timeout adds increasing delays before you're allowed to snooze. Deep Focus is the real thing: once it's running, blocked apps genuinely aren't reachable until the timer runs out, and deleting the app itself doesn't undo the block.

That's a hard block Fella doesn't dispute. The catch is what it takes to get there. Deep Focus sits behind Opal's paid plan, and even once you're paying, it's a mode you have to select before each session starts, not the app's resting state. On the days you most need the strict version, you also have to be the one who remembers to choose it.

Fella skips the selection screen entirely. There's no Normal, Timeout, or Deep Focus to pick between, because there's only ever the one behavior: blocked, with the same 5-minute unlock, every session whether you thought to arm anything or not.

Opal's free tier caps you at one recurring focus session. Most of the controls that make Opal worth comparing to a dedicated blocker, Deep Focus among them, sit behind the paid plan. Trying Opal for free mostly tells you what the app could do, not what it will do for you day to day.

Opal Pro isn't cheap either. Pricing runs from roughly $8 a month on an annual plan up to around $20 billed monthly, with a $399 lifetime option for anyone who wants to stop paying altogether. That's a real range to weigh against Fella's flat $9.99 monthly or $34.99 annual.

Fella has one plan, one price, and nothing gated behind it. The 3-day free trial shows you the exact product you'd be using every day after, not a limited preview of a stricter mode you'd need to upgrade into.

No mode-picking. There's no "strict mode" you have to remember to switch on before it's too late, and no softer setting waiting for the day your willpower gives out. Blocking is just how Fella works, every single day, whether you feel strong or not.

A real limit, not a suggestion. One 5-minute unlock per session, and that's it. When it's gone, it's gone. No pleading with yourself for a second round, no quiet exception that turns into a habit. The limit holds even on the nights you don't want it to.

Nothing to configure wrong. Every extra setting is a place to hide from yourself. Fella keeps that list short on purpose, so there's no toggle to loosen, no schedule to quietly bend, and no gap for old habits to slip back through.

Opal's flexibility is a real advantage for some people. If you want different rules on weekdays versus weekends, a strictness level you can adjust as you build the habit, or detailed usage insights to review later, that configurability is genuinely useful, not just a weakness dressed up as a feature.

Fella is the better fit for a narrower problem. If you've already tried the dials and schedules and keep finding the setting that lets you back in, you don't need more configuration, you need less. That's the specific gap Fella is built to close.