The short answer#
Covenant Eyes is an accountability product. Its stated philosophy is freedom through transparency. The app monitors your devices and sends what you do to a person you choose, and that person is the mechanism. It works for people who want someone else in the loop.
Firmhold is a pattern product. It records relapses and survived urges, waits until there is enough data to be honest, and then tells you the conditions your own relapses cluster around. No partner, no report, no human review, and no blocking.
The actual difference: who sees it#
Covenant Eyes describes its own mechanism plainly: the app takes screenshots of your screen and sends them to an ally, across iOS, Mac, Android and Windows. That is not a criticism and it is not a hidden behaviour. It is the product, stated in their own marketing, and for a lot of people it is exactly the thing that makes them stop.
It does mean a specific trade, and it is worth naming before you pay for either of us: the effectiveness depends entirely on a relationship being safe enough for the reports not to become a source of shame. When that relationship is good, it is powerful. When it is a spouse who is hurt, or a mentor you are afraid of disappointing, the reporting can become the thing you start managing instead of the behaviour.
What Firmhold does instead, concretely:
- Our optional browser extension sends a category and a duration, not a screenshot, not a URL, and not a page's contents.
- A detection becomes a card you resolve yourself: relapse, urge survived, or false positive. Nothing is written to your history until you say so.
- No human reviews any of it, ours or anyone else's, and there is no feature that shares it by design.
- Patterns are computed by fixed, deterministic rules on our own servers. Your data is never sent to a language model or any third party.
Side by side#
| Firmhold | Covenant Eyes | |
|---|---|---|
| Core mechanism | Finds the pattern behind your urges | Reports your activity to a person you choose |
| Sees your activity | Nobody | Your nominated ally |
| Screenshots | Never | Yes, by design |
| Blocking | No | Yes |
| AI on your data | None, ever | Not advertised |
| Streak counter | No, deliberately | Accountability reports |
| Free tier | Yes: logging, calendar, daily risk, panic button | No, 30-day money-back guarantee |
One row deserves a caveat rather than a tick. “No AI” is a real difference from the two highest-profile products in this category, whose headline features route what you tell them through a language model. It is not a claim to be the only private option: Covenant Eyes does not advertise AI either, and neither do some others.
What each one costs#
Checked on their own pricing page on 14 August 2026. Covenant Eyes Victory is $18 a month, $198 a year, or $950 for a lifetime licence, with a 30-day money-back guarantee rather than a free trial: you pay first, then can be refunded within 30 days. Firmhold is $9.99 a month or $99.99 a year, with the same guarantee window, plus a genuinely free tier that needs no card at all.
So we are cheaper on both periods. Treat that as one input rather than the argument: $99 a year against $198 is not the difference that should decide this. Who sees your activity is.
When Covenant Eyes is the better choice#
Genuinely, and not as a rhetorical move. Covenant Eyes is the better buy if:
- You want another person involved and you have someone safe to nominate. That is their entire design, and we do not do it at all.
- You want device-level blocking and filtering, particularly across a family's devices. We do not block anything.
- Your context is a church, a men's group or a counselling relationship that already runs on accountability. Their product is built for that and ours is not.
- You want a lifetime licence. We only sell a subscription.
When Firmhold is#
- You will not be fully honest if someone is watching. Under-reporting is the failure mode that makes accountability tools quietly useless, and it is invisible when it happens.
- You already know that it happens and want to know when and why. Time of day, day of week, stress, being alone: these cluster, and the cluster is different for every person.
- You have nobody you want to nominate, or nominating someone would create a bigger problem than the one you are solving.
- You want the intervention to be free. Our panic button is free permanently, and we will not put a paywall in front of someone mid-urge.
What neither of us should be claiming#
Covenant Eyes advertises “Join 1.7 Million others.” We will not answer that with a number of our own, because we do not have one worth quoting. Firmhold is new and we have no results data. When we do, we will publish it and say where it came from.
That is also why there are no testimonials, no star ratings and no success rates on this page. If you are comparing tools in this category, a good habit is to check whether a percentage on a marketing page has a source attached. Very often it does not, and sometimes it traces back to the company's own blog.
Try Firmhold free
Logging, your calendar, daily risk status and the panic button are free, with no card. If you upgrade and it is not for you, there is a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Start free, no card neededCommon questions#
What is the main difference between Covenant Eyes and Firmhold?
Who sees your activity. Covenant Eyes is built around accountability: it monitors your devices and reports to a person you nominate. Firmhold is built around self-knowledge: nothing is shown to another human, and the analysis is done by fixed rules on our servers rather than by a person or a language model.
Are there alternatives to Covenant Eyes, or apps like it, without an accountability partner?
Yes. Firmhold has no accountability partner, no ally, and no reports to anyone. It is not the only product in the category without one, so compare on the rest of the fit too, not just this.
Is there a free alternative to Covenant Eyes?
Firmhold's free tier is permanent, not a trial: unlimited relapse and urge logging, a 30-day behavioral calendar, daily risk status, and the panic button, all free forever, no card required. Covenant Eyes has no ongoing free tier; it is pay-first with a 30-day money-back guarantee. The comparison worth making is what each does after that: Firmhold's core logging and panic button stay free indefinitely, and only the pattern-analysis engine (Insight Engine, after 15 entries) is paid.
Does Firmhold block websites?
No. Blocking is genuinely useful as friction for some people, and if that is what you want, a blocker or Covenant Eyes will serve you better than we will. Firmhold detects that a session happened and asks you to confirm it, so the goal is understanding the pattern rather than preventing the moment.
Which is cheaper?
Firmhold, on both billing periods, as of 8 August 2026: $9.99 a month or $99.99 a year, against Covenant Eyes Victory at $18 a month or $198 a year. Prices change, so check both before deciding.
Can I use both?
Yes, and for some people that is the sensible answer. They do different jobs: one adds friction and another person, the other tells you when and why the urges arrive.
Sources#
- Covenant Eyes, Victory plan pricing page, checked 8 August 2026 and re-verified 14 August 2026: $18 monthly, $198 annual, $950 lifetime, 30-day money-back guarantee (not a free trial).
- Covenant Eyes published product description of its screenshot-and-ally mechanism across iOS, Mac, Android and Windows, and its stated philosophy of freedom through transparency.
- Firmhold pricing and feature split as published on our own pricing page and enforced in the product.
Covenant Eyes is a product of Covenant Eyes, Inc. We are not affiliated with them, and this page is our own comparison rather than theirs. Everything stated about their product comes from their published material on the date shown. Prices and features change, so check theirs before you decide.