Comparison

WINNR vs BrainBuddy (2026): BrainBuddy Review and Comparison

WINNR vs BrainBuddy, checked October 2026. Is BrainBuddy free, what it costs, store ratings, what it collects, where it goes, and who should pick which.

By the WINNR team · Published 25 October 2026 · Updated 25 October 2026 · 17 min read

Prices, ratings and privacy details checked on 25 October 2026.

The short answer: pick BrainBuddy if you want an app you can install tonight, with a 100-day programme, a team-based community and a content blocker, and you are happy with a subscription around 12.99 US dollars a month. Pick WINNR if you want your data kept in the EU, a progress counter that keeps your history after a slip, and a path to a real psychologist at a price a student can pay. WINNR launches on iOS and Android in December 2026, so until then it is a waiting list, not an app on your phone.

WINNR publishes this comparison. We have tried to be fair; every claim about BrainBuddy links to its source, and we apply the same privacy, pricing and evidence questions to ourselves as to BrainBuddy.

At a glance

BrainBuddy review: what it is and how it works

Who makes it

BrainBuddy is published by AppStudio Australia Pty Ltd on both the App Store and Google Play. The Play listing gives a Sydney address (Level 26, 44 Market Street, Sydney NSW 2000). The Australian Business Register lists AppStudio Australia Pty Ltd as active, ABN 88 160 135 071, in New South Wales. The app has been in the App Store since 11 November 2013, one of the oldest in the category. Neither the homepage nor the privacy policy names a founder.

How it works

You answer a quiz, get a score, and start the programme. According to the homepage and the App Store listing, the core features are:

• Rewiring programme. A 100-day sequence of lessons and exercises with, the homepage says, a heavy focus on CBT. The App Store description says it is built on 12 years of research, without saying whose.
• Daily check-up and statistics. Tracks sleep, mood and slips, with charts from day one.
• Craving control and journal. Short exercises for the moment an urge hits, and a daily journal.
• Life Tree. A visual that grows with each positive day.
• Community and teams. A feed for sharing stories, plus team challenges from one day to one year.
• Content blocker and web filter. Described on the App Store as the most powerful blocker available.
• Meditations. Guided audio, optionally saved to Apple Health.
• Paid courses. Three separate courses (self-control, anxiety, confidence) sold alongside the subscription.

BrainBuddy runs on iOS 13 or later, iPadOS, visionOS and Android, in English only. No desktop app or browser extension is listed anywhere we could find.

What BrainBuddy says about itself

The homepage headline is "Quit porn with science." It claims over 10,000 five-star reviews, a 2023 Sensor Tower top-grossing position, and shows eight testimonials with unexplained percentage "test results"; the App Store description says "millions" choose Premium. No method or source is given for any of these. The same test applies to WINNR: it has no user count or outcome figure to publish, and says so.

BrainBuddy pricing, free trial and ratings (as of October 2026)

BrainBuddy's website does not publish a price. The App Store description states that all features require a paid Premium subscription after onboarding, auto-renewing unless turned off 24 hours before the period ends. No free trial is mentioned on the website or in the store description, although an April 2025 Google Play reviewer describes starting on one.

Sources: the in-app purchase lists on the US and Dutch storefronts, checked 25 October 2026. Apple does not label which price is monthly, yearly or lifetime, and BrainBuddy does not say. Reviewers between 2021 and 2025 consistently describe 12 to 14 dollars a month, which matches the 12.99 dollar price point. Treat the yearly figure as unknown until you see the payment screen. Google Play shows no price range. Refunds go through Apple or Google, and deleting the app does not cancel the subscription.

Store ratings, checked 25 October 2026:

• App Store (US): 4.7 stars from 25,904 ratings per the Apple lookup API. The API returns a 17+ age rating; the web listing shows 16+. Last update: version 11.4.6 on 19 March 2026.
• App Store (other storefronts): 4.5 stars from 2.3K ratings in the UK, 4.4 stars from 223 ratings in the Netherlands.
• Google Play: 4.7 stars from about 30,400 reviews, 500K+ downloads, content rating Teen, last updated 7 July 2026, per the listing.
• Trustpilot: we could not load a profile for brainbuddyapp.com on 25 October 2026, so we do not use it.

WINNR, for the same test: 9 euro a month or 49 euro a year, published on winnr.now. The first 100 waiting-list members pay 29 euro for the first year. No free tier; the check and your plan are free. No store ratings yet, because the app is not in the stores until December 2026.

Privacy and data

Both apps ask you to type in things you would not tell most people. Here is what each one says it does with that, using the same five questions.

BrainBuddy

What is collected. The privacy policy (updated 4 May 2026) lists your email and a hashed password; optional profile details; check-ins, streak data, content you create and the wellness metrics derived from them; subscription status; device, OS, language, time zone, crash logs and country-level location from your IP address; a push token; and advertising identifiers (IDFA or Android Advertising ID) where permitted. It does not collect precise location, contacts, photos, microphone audio, biometric data or card details. The developer-declared App Store privacy label lists only "data linked to you", including email for the developer's own marketing, user content, health data and "sensitive info"; no "data used to track you" section appears.

Who can see it. Apple and Google Play (payments), RevenueCat (subscriptions), Firebase and Google (backend, analytics), AppsFlyer, Meta and Google Ads (marketing attribution), Mailchimp (email) and OneSignal (push). Data is not sold and not shared for behavioural advertising, but device identifiers go to attribution providers to measure BrainBuddy's own ads. The Google Play data safety summary declares no data shared with third parties. The policy does not say who can see community posts or team chat.

Where it is stored. Operated from Australia; some providers store or process data in the United States, the European Union or other locations, with standard contractual clauses "where applicable". No region is named for your check-ins or journal. The policy references the Australian Privacy Act, GDPR rights for EEA, UK and Swiss users, and the CCPA.

Retention and deletion. Kept while the account exists; inactive accounts are not auto-deleted. After a deletion request, data is deleted within 30 days and backups within another 30; purchase records up to 7 years. Delete in the app (Settings, Account, Delete Account) or by emailing support@brainbuddyapp.com; rights requests are answered within 30 days. No data protection officer is named, and no postal address appears in the policy.

Reported incident. None disclosed, and we found none. The policy commits to notifying users and regulators if one happens.

WINNR

What is collected. The privacy notice (updated 4 July 2026, marked as pending formal legal review) lists your email, a display handle, subscription status and a Stripe customer reference; and, treated as special-category data, your questionnaire answers, goals, urge events, counter history, journal entries, community posts, partner messages and AI coach messages. No card details are stored. The website uses no cookies or IP logging, and WINNR collects no advertising identifiers.

Who can see it. Supabase (database and sign-in, AWS Stockholm), Hetzner (hosting, Germany), Brevo (email, France), Stripe (payments, US and Ireland), Google (only if you use Google sign-in). If you opt in to the AI coach, your coach messages are processed by OpenRouter with a DeepSeek model in the United States, under zero-retention terms and standard contractual clauses. That is the honest exception to "EU only", and you can use WINNR without the coach.

Where it is stored. EU servers, with the AI coach exception above.

Retention and deletion. Kept while your account is open; accounts unused for 12 months are deleted automatically; payment records are kept seven years under Dutch tax law. Delete everything from Settings, actioned immediately, and export your coach data. Other requests go to winnr.now@gmail.com with a one-month response commitment. No DPO yet; Chino.io will be appointed at launch.

Reported incident. None. WINNR has not launched, so this line is a policy, not a track record.

Who is behind it

BrainBuddy

AppStudio Australia Pty Ltd, a private company registered in New South Wales, Australia, with a Sydney address on Google Play. No founder, director or team member is named on the website, in the stores or in the privacy policy, and the only press coverage we found, from 2020, does not name one either. Support is by email, at support@brainbuddyapp.com. The terms page is short, undated, sets a minimum age of 13 (the privacy policy says 16), and refers in places to Instagram rather than BrainBuddy, which suggests an unedited template.

WINNR

WINNR is made by Stichting Extraordinary Life (KvK 75069385), a Dutch foundation based at Weena 29B in Rotterdam. The founder is NJ (Nicolaas van Disseldorp), a coach and researcher. The team of six includes a CTO, a founding engineer, a lead writer with a background in work and organisational psychology, and two practical-interventions consultants, one of whom previously built group-therapy protocols at a treatment centre, plus an advisor with a neuroscience background. Bios are at winnr.now/about.html. WINNR won Impacthon (PLNT, Leiden) in September 2026 and was developed within a Tilburg University programme. Contact is winnr.now@gmail.com.

What real users say about BrainBuddy

We read the reviews shown on the US, UK, Australian, Canadian and Dutch App Store pages and on Google Play on 25 October 2026. These are paraphrased themes, not quotes, and store reviews are self-selected. The App Store surfaces few recent reviews, so the 2025 and 2026 material comes mostly from Google Play.

Recurring praise

• The programme works for people who stick with it. A February 2025 App Store reviewer said the app helped him through a slip and that the anonymous peer support alone was worth the cost. A July 2026 Google Play reviewer praised the team accountability feature.
• Design, charts and the Life Tree. Reviewers from 2019 to 2023 repeatedly name these as what keeps them checking in.
• Averages of 4.7 on both stores, from tens of thousands of ratings, show most people rate it well.

Recurring complaints

• Price. The most common complaint on every storefront in every year. An App Store reviewer in July 2021 called roughly 12 dollars a month too much for young users; a Dutch reviewer in October 2022 said he could not afford it. The developer's 2021 reply was that the price reflects the value and upkeep.
• Bugs with tracking and check-ins. A September 2023 App Store reviewer had a streak reset to day one despite daily check-ins. A July 2025 Google Play reviewer said the app wrongly reported missed days, froze and crashed, support did not load, and he cancelled after a 14 dollar charge. An April 2025 Play reviewer reported recurring bugs and no reply from support; 57 people marked that review helpful.
• Team chat and community. A July 2024 UK reviewer said team chat messages often fail to send; the July 2026 Play reviewer saw an error that deleted his messages; a January 2021 Dutch reviewer was moved between teams without warning. A January 2024 App Store reviewer found some community posts explicit enough to be a trigger.
• The blocker. A December 2020 Australian reviewer said the filter only covered Safari, was easy to switch off, and could be bypassed with another browser. We found no more recent review describing the blocker in detail.
• Who it is written for. Reviewers in 2018, 2021 and 2022 said the content assumes a straight man in a relationship. A July 2021 Canadian reviewer said the intake quiz seemed built to label people.
• Support responsiveness. Developer replies on the App Store are dated 2021 to 2024; we saw none on the 2025 and 2026 reviews on either store.

Head-to-head

The practical difference tonight is simple: BrainBuddy is on your phone in two minutes and WINNR is not. The practical difference over a year is where your check-ins live, whether a slip wipes your streak, whether anyone is measuring ads against your device ID, and whether you can reach a real psychologist from inside the app.

What the research says

Be careful with every company's claims, ours included. A 2022 content analysis in JMIR Formative Research reviewed 170 apps for problematic pornography use and found that none cited direct evidence of effectiveness or safety. That is still true of BrainBuddy, whose "12 years of research" comes with no study attached, and it is true of WINNR. WINNR's science page says so in plain words: the cited evidence concerns the methods WINNR uses, nobody has yet checked whether WINNR itself works, and a controlled study is planned after launch.

The methods WINNR builds on are Acceptance and Commitment Therapy with CBT elements, self-monitoring with goal setting and feedback, and if-then plans; the screener is the PPCS-6 (Bothe and colleagues, 2020). The team also draws on the Dual Control Model of sexual response (Bancroft and Janssen) to understand how excitation and inhibition shape an urge, as a model to design around rather than as proof that WINNR works. BrainBuddy's homepage says its exercises focus on CBT, which overlaps with WINNR, and its store description adds a neuroscience framing without citing a study.

Neither WINNR nor BrainBuddy is a treatment, therapy, medical device or crisis service. If porn use is seriously hurting your life, a licensed therapist is worth adding to either app.

When WINNR is the better choice

• You want your check-ins, journal and community posts kept in the EU, with every processor named and a delete button that works immediately.
• You have slipped before and a streak going back to zero is part of why you gave up last time.
• You want to talk to a real person with training, not only a peer team, and you cannot pay therapy prices.
• You do not want an advertising identifier attached to an app like this on your phone.
• You want a known price in euro before you install anything, and you can wait until December 2026.

When BrainBuddy is the better choice

• You need something tonight, with a structured 100-day programme already built.
• You like team challenges and a visual like the Life Tree to keep you checking in daily.
• You want guided meditations in the same app, with optional Apple Health logging.
• You use an iPad or Apple Vision Pro and want the app there too.
• You have read the recent reviews about bugs and support, and 12.99 dollars a month is fine for you.

How to switch from BrainBuddy, or use both

If you are moving to WINNR

1. Join the WINNR waiting list at winnr.now by taking the free 4-minute check. Your place and the founding price are reserved by email.
2. Save what matters from BrainBuddy. Write down your trigger patterns and anything useful from your journal. The policy describes no export feature, so copy by hand before you delete.
3. Cancel the subscription at the source. Through Apple, in iOS Settings under Subscriptions; through Google, in Play subscriptions, at least 24 hours before renewal. Deleting the app does not cancel billing.
4. Delete your BrainBuddy account. In the app, Settings, Account, Delete Account, or email support@brainbuddyapp.com. Deletion completes within 30 days and backups within another 30. Ask for written confirmation.
5. Keep a blocker in the gap. Until December, use Screen Time's adult-site limit on iPhone or Private DNS with a family filter on Android, and give the passcode to someone you trust. Our guide to the best porn blocker apps covers the free options.

If you want to use both

• BrainBuddy for the 100-day programme, meditations and team challenges, where it is strong today.
• WINNR for the counter that keeps your history, the matched partner, and the psychologist sessions once they open.
• Pick one app as your official counter so one slip does not become two broken streaks.

Key takeaways

• BrainBuddy is a long-running, well-rated app (4.7 on the App Store from 25,904 ratings, 4.7 on Google Play from about 30,400) with a 100-day programme, teams, meditations and a blocker; it publishes no price, and reviewers describe about 12.99 dollars a month.
• BrainBuddy's privacy policy names its processors, including three marketing-attribution services that receive your advertising identifier, and allows storage in Australia, the US, the EU or elsewhere. No incident has been reported.
• The recurring complaints are price, tracking bugs, team chat errors and absent support; the recurring praise is the programme, the design and the community.
• WINNR costs 9 euro a month or 49 euro a year, keeps data in the EU except for opt-in AI coach messages, collects no advertising identifiers, and keeps your full history after a slip.
• WINNR is not in the stores until December 2026, its social-media blur, videos and psychologist access are in development, and it has no outcome data, like every app in this category.

FAQ

Is BrainBuddy free?

No. The app is free to download, but all features need a paid Premium subscription after onboarding. As of October 2026 the US App Store lists Full Access purchases from 2.99 to 99.99 dollars (2.99 to 99.99 euro in the Netherlands), with 12.99 dollars the most common price point and the figure reviewers describe as monthly. The website publishes no price and mentions no free trial, though a 2025 reviewer reports one.

Is BrainBuddy worth it?

For many people, yes: the ratings are high across stores and years, and the programme, the Life Tree and the community are what users praise. The recurring complaints are price, streak bugs, team chat failures and support that does not answer. Read the most recent Google Play reviews before you pay.

Does BrainBuddy block porn?

It includes a content blocker and web filter, which the App Store description calls the most powerful available. The one detailed user account we found, from December 2020, said it covered only Safari and could be bypassed with another browser. We could not test it. If blocking is your main need, read our guide to the best porn blocker apps.

Is my data safe with BrainBuddy?

The policy says your data is not sold and not shared for behavioural advertising. It is operated from Australia and may be stored in the US, the EU or elsewhere; it collects advertising identifiers for attribution; deletion takes up to 30 days plus 30 for backups; no incident has been reported. Decide for yourself what you are willing to type into it.

Is WINNR better than BrainBuddy?

Today, BrainBuddy is the only one of the two you can download. From December 2026, WINNR offers EU data storage, no advertising identifiers, a counter that does not reset after a slip, a matched partner and a path to real psychologists at 49 euro a year. Neither app has published evidence that it works. For a third option, see our winnr vs quittr comparison or the roundup of the best apps to quit porn.

Can I use WINNR and BrainBuddy together?

Yes. A sensible split is BrainBuddy for the programme and meditations, WINNR for the counter, partner and psychologist sessions. Keep one app as your main counter.

Want a plan for your own pattern? Take the private 4-minute check. Fighting an urge right now? Open the urge page.