Flora, made by AppFinca, shares Forest's basic idea — grow a virtual tree while staying off your phone, watch it die if you leave — with its own distinctive twist: friends can grow trees together, and paid tiers fund real trees planted through partner organisations like Trees.org. It's a well-designed, socially aware take on the same honor-system model, and it's clearly built by a team that cares as much about the emotional experience of using it as about the underlying mechanic. AppFinca has also built Flora's collaborative growing feature to support small groups rather than just pairs, which means a whole team, class or friend group can grow a shared forest together rather than being limited to one-on-one accountability.
What Flora actually does
You start a focus timer and a tree grows; leaving the app to use your phone kills it, based on the app noticing you've switched away from it during an active session. Flora's collaborative feature lets friends grow trees together for shared accountability, turning an individual habit into something closer to a small group project, and its paid subscription tiers fund real tree planting through partner organisations as you keep using the app, with pricing ranging from a couple of dollars a year up to roughly ten depending on how often you want a real tree planted. Flora's tree-planting partner organisations also publish periodic updates on total trees planted through the app, giving subscribers a way to see the cumulative, real-world effect of their collective use rather than just their own individual contribution.
Where Flora is honestly the better pick
The collaborative growing feature is a genuine social layer Mr. Grummel doesn't offer — growing trees with friends adds a kind of shared stake a solo quiz question can't replicate, and checking in on a friend's forest alongside your own gives the whole habit a social dimension worth crediting on its own terms. The real-world tree-planting tie-in is also a verifiable, tangible payoff for sustained use that exists independently of whether the blocking itself worked that day, which means even an imperfect week of self-control still funds something real in the world. It's also worth noting that AppFinca, the developer behind Flora, is a small independent studio rather than a large venture-backed company, which shows in the app's more modest, focused feature set compared to some better-funded competitors in this comparison set.
| Feature | Flora | Mr. Grummel |
|---|---|---|
| Platforms | iOS, Android | iOS & Android (in development) |
| Core mechanism | Honor-system commitment device — a virtual tree dies if you leave the app during a session, with collaborative group sessions | Actually blocks the flagged app; answer a quiz question to unlock |
| Blocks the flagged app by default? | No — leaving the app only affects the virtual tree, nothing else is restricted | Yes |
| Physical hardware required? | No | No |
| Price | Core timer free; "Plant a Real Tree" subscription tiers roughly $1.99–$9.99/yr | Not yet announced — join the waiting list |
The one mechanical difference that actually matters
Like Forest, Flora's entire mechanism is symbolic — there's no lock, no permission check, nothing actually preventing you from opening any app at any time, no matter how many trees you've already lost to broken sessions. The consequence is a dying tree you see afterward, not a barrier you meet in the moment, which means the moment of actual temptation passes with nothing standing in the way at all. Mr. Grummel works the other way: the block is real and immediate, and getting past it costs a right answer, not just the loss of something virtual you'll likely have forgotten about by the next time you open the app. It's also worth being honest that this symbolic-consequence model isn't unique to Flora or Forest — most gamified blockers in this comparison set share some version of the same underlying honor-system limitation, dressed up in different visual themes.
Who should pick which
If growing something with friends, and funding real trees along the way, is genuinely enough motivation to keep you off your phone, Flora is a thoughtfully built tool doing exactly that, and the tangible payoff of real trees gives it staying power a purely symbolic reward wouldn't have. If you've found that a symbolic consequence doesn't actually stop you in the moment — that the tree just quietly dies and you keep scrolling anyway — an app that actually blocks the thing you're reaching for is the more direct fix. It's also worth trying Flora specifically with a group of friends before deciding whether the social layer is what you actually need, since the collaborative feature is genuinely central to what makes Flora distinct from its closest, more solitary competitors. It's also worth remembering that Flora and Forest, despite their similar core mechanic, actually cultivate genuinely different communities — Flora's more social, collaborative bent tends to draw people specifically looking for that shared, group experience over a solitary one.