Not A Browser vs Freedom

25 August 2026 · facts checked against public sources on that date

Freedom is the veteran here, and the only tool on this site that takes your laptop seriously. This is less a rivalry than a division of labour, and the useful part of this page is where the line falls.

Freedom is right about the thing most tools ignore

Blocking a website on your phone while your laptop sits open two feet away is theatre. The habit does not live in a device; it lives in you, and it will find whichever screen is nearest.

Freedom is the mature answer to that. One blocklist, one session, applied at network level across iPhone, Android, Mac, Windows and browser extensions simultaneously. Nothing else in this comparison set even attempts it.

Its Locked Mode is the feature worth paying for: once a session starts you cannot end it, and deleting the app does not end it either. That closes the escape route that makes most blockers decorative after week two.

If your problem spans devices, and especially if it involves a work laptop, Freedom is the tool and Not A Browser is not a substitute for it.

Where a schedule stops working

Freedom's model is the session: from nine to five, or during a work block, these things are unavailable.

That model fits a laptop almost perfectly. A laptop is a tool you sit down at to do something, and a window during which it refuses to do something else is coherent.

It fits a phone much less well, because a phone is not a tool you sit down at. It is the thing you carry, and the errands do not respect the schedule. The parcel arrives during the block. The two-factor email arrives during the block. The restaurant with the QR menu is at lunchtime, which is in the middle of the block.

So blocking the browser on a phone means either the block has holes in it or the phone does. Neither is stable for long.

Why the two fit together

The cleanest setup, if you are using both:

• Freedom handles your laptop, and any phone apps you could not bring yourself to delete. Locked Mode on, schedule set, decided once.
• Not A Browser holds the phone's default browser role, permanently, so the browser is never something that needs blocking. Links, QR codes and verification emails work at every hour of the day, and none of them opens a search bar.

They do not overlap and they do not fight. Freedom restricts what is available during a window; Not A Browser changes what the phone is capable of, always.

The cost difference, stated plainly

Freedom is around $8.99 a month or $39.99 a year, with a lifetime option. Not A Browser has no announced price yet; it will be set on Google Play at publication.

Whatever that number turns out to be, comparing the two on price would be misleading. Freedom maintains software on five platforms, runs the infrastructure that makes network-level blocking work, and employs people. Not A Browser is one Android app with no servers, built by one person, and it costs approximately nothing to keep running.

Different products with different cost structures. If you need what Freedom does, its price is reasonable for what it is.