Forest vs Flora: Which Focus App Should You Use?

Forest and Flora run the same idea: start a timer, a tree grows, and leaving the app kills it. Forest is the more polished and more featured of the two, with app blocking, detailed analytics and browser extensions behind a subscription. Flora is built around doing sessions with other people and offers opt-in services that plant real trees based on whether you finish.

Pick Forest if you’re working alone and want the better-built tool. Pick Flora if the thing that actually gets you working is a friend doing it with you.

Details below were checked in September 2026, and app pricing changes often.

Forest vs Flora at a glance #

What do they have in common? #

The loop is identical. You choose a length, start the session, and a tree grows while you stay put. Switch to something else and the tree dies, leaving a dead stump in your record. Finished sessions build a forest that acts as a visual history of your focused time.

Both are free to download with in-app purchases. Both run on iOS and Android with a Chrome extension. Both have real-world tree planting attached, and both use an account for their social and sync features.

If you only care about the core mechanic, either will do, and the choice barely matters.

Where Forest is stronger #

It’s the more complete product. Deep Focus blocks other apps during a session rather than only noticing that you left. Plus adds custom allowlists so you can permit the apps you genuinely need, multiple blocking rules, and full analytics with focus tags that let you break down your time by Study, Work or Writing.

Browser coverage. Chrome and Firefox extensions extend the same idea to a laptop, which matters if half your distraction lives in tabs.

The tree planting is clearer. Coins earned in the app are spent to trigger real plantings, with Forest covering the cost from revenue through its partnership with Trees for the Future. The company reports more than two million real trees planted across five African countries.

More to collect. Exclusive tree species, a full soundscape library and coin boosts give the collection loop more to work with, if that’s what keeps you coming back.

The cost is the subscription. On the App Store, Forest lists Early Bird subscriptions at $5.99 a month or roughly $32.49 to $35.99 a year, plus consumable currency packs from $0.99 up to $21.99. The older Pro tier is closed to new users, so new arrivals choose between the free tier and Plus.

Where Flora is stronger #

It’s genuinely built for working with other people. You can challenge friends to grow a tree together, chat, share progress and see who kills a tree. When a group session succeeds, each person wins an extra tree. Forest’s Plant Together does something similar, but Flora puts the social layer at the centre rather than to one side.

That matters more than it sounds. Working alongside someone else, even remotely, is one of the more reliable ways people get themselves started, a practice usually called body doubling. The research on it is early and mostly descriptive, which we cover honestly in body doubling for focus.

The paid extras are smaller. Flora’s listed in-app purchases are themed tours at $0.99 and $1.99 rather than a subscription.

Real trees work differently. Flora describes opt-in Price and Care services that plant real trees through partners including Trees.org and Eden Reforestation Projects, tied to whether you kill or successfully grow a tree in the app. Flora’s own materials don’t spell out the amounts involved on the pages we checked, so read the in-app terms before opting in to anything that charges you for a failed session.

Which should you pick? #

Choose Forest if you work alone, you want blocking and analytics in the same app as the timer, you want the laptop covered too, and a subscription is acceptable.

Choose Flora if your sessions go better with friends in them, or you’d rather avoid a subscription.

Choose neither if your real problem is that a dead tree doesn’t bother you. Once the collection stops mattering, a cosmetic penalty stops working, and the honest next step is a blocker that removes the choice rather than another timer. There are alternatives of both kinds in 7 Forest app alternatives.

A third option: a stricter rule, no account #

If what you liked about Forest was the stake and not the forest, the mechanic can be tightened. Work Capy runs the same basic bargain with a capybara in a hot spring, and states the rule precisely: leave the app for more than about five seconds and you get one warning; leave again and the session is forfeit, paying nothing and adding no minutes to your total.

The differences that matter against Forest and Flora:

• One warning before anything is lost, so glancing at a notification doesn’t kill a session outright.
• Locking the phone never counts as leaving. Sleeping the phone and turning it face down is the behaviour it rewards, not a gamble.
• Pausing is free, so a phone call costs nothing if you pause first.
• No account, no network, no sync. Everything is stored on the device and it works offline.
• Silent by design, so whatever you already work to keeps playing.
• Gentle mode switches the stakes off entirely if they stop helping.
• No ad or purchase can restore a forfeited session, which is the point of having stakes at all.

Its limits are real and worth stating. It doesn’t block anything, so you can always open another app and lose the session. There’s no desktop version, no browser extension, no sync and no task list. It plants no trees. The paid extras are five profession themes at $9.99 each as one-time purchases, each also earnable free at between 30 and 220 lifetime hours of focus.

For a wider list including blockers and task-based timers, see the best focus timer apps.

Do tree-growing focus apps actually work? #

They work the way any mild commitment device works: they attach a small cost to a choice you’d otherwise make without noticing. That’s a real mechanism, and voluntary constraints do shift behaviour in field research, though usually by modest amounts. We go through the evidence in commitment devices for focus.

What no tree app has shown is that it makes you learn more. The controlled research on timed work with fixed breaks has found effects on fatigue and mood but no difference in how much people actually complete, as we cover in does the Pomodoro Technique work? A timer gets you into the chair. What you do once you’re there is what decides your results.

Frequently asked questions #

Is Flora the same as Forest? #

They share the same core mechanic of growing a tree that dies if you leave the app, but they’re separate apps from different developers. Forest has stronger blocking, analytics and browser extensions behind a subscription; Flora focuses on sessions with friends and sells smaller one-off extras.

Is Forest or Flora free? #

Both are free to download with in-app purchases. Forest’s free tier includes the timer, Deep Focus blocking and group sessions, with analytics and allowlists reserved for Plus. Flora is free with optional themed tours and opt-in tree-planting services.

Does Flora charge you money if you fail? #

Flora offers opt-in Price and Care services connected to killing or growing a tree, which fund real tree planting. The pages we checked don’t publish the amounts, so check the terms inside the app before enabling anything that charges you for a failed session.

Which focus app is best for studying with friends? #

Flora, of the two, because friend challenges and shared sessions are its main feature. If you want a live person rather than a shared tree, a virtual coworking service that pairs you on video is a stronger option for the specific problem of not starting.

Can you cheat Forest and Flora? #

Yes, in the sense that you can pick up a different device, or let the tree die and carry on. That’s true of every timer, which is why some people move to a blocker instead. The deterrent only works while you care about the thing you’d lose.