So, is Opal worth it? Short answer: yes, if you want protected blocks of time, you like the design, and $99.99-$239 (paid annually or monthly) a year reads as a fair trade for getting hours back. It is not worth it if your phone problem is tied to specific places rather than specific hours, or if you'd rather spend less for a model that fits you better.
Longer answer below. First, the disclosure: we make enough., a competing app, and we'll say where we think we fit better and where Opal does. We think Opal is one of the best products in this category, and we'd rather say so plainly than pretend otherwise and hope you don't notice the About page.
What you're buying
Opal's pricing is simple and not cheap. Pro costs $8.29 a month billed annually ($99.99 a year), $19.99 if you pay monthly, or $399 once for lifetime access. There's a free plan, but it allows a single rule at the basic difficulty, so it's a demo more than a tier you'd live on.
Pro gets you the full product: unlimited rules, scheduled and on-demand focus sessions, an allow-only mode that flips the model to "hide everything except these," harder blocking difficulties up to a no-unblocks Deep Focus, and the Opal Score with history, a running measure of how your focus is trending. It works across iOS, Android, and Mac.
What Opal does well
The session model is the heart of it, and it's excellent. You mark out the hours that matter, mornings for work, evenings for the family, and the apps you've named are gone for that stretch. No per-tap negotiation, no counting opens. For people whose day has real structure, this maps onto life better than any nagging reminder.
Deep Focus is the feature that earns the subscription for its fans. At the harder difficulties there is no escape hatch: the session runs to its end whether or not 3pm-you regrets what 8am-you decided. If you know your future self can talk their way past most locks, this is the point of paying.
And the polish is real. The reports are pleasant instead of preachy, the soundscapes and timers make focus feel like a feature rather than a punishment, and the Mac app means your laptop, where plenty of modern distraction actually lives, follows the same plan as your phone.
Where it falls short
The price is the obvious one. At $99.99 a year, Opal sits at the top of the category on cost. Reviewers keep landing on the same question, is this worth $100 a year?, and the honest answer is: only if you use the parts that are Opal's alone. Our own Complete plan is $49.99 a year for a different model. We put a few apps side by side in Opal vs BePresent vs enough. if you want the full comparison.
In our opinion, the free plan is too thin to evaluate the product. One rule on the easiest setting tells you what Opal looks like, not what it does. Budget for the trial week and treat the decision as a paid one.
And the session model, Opal's strength, is also its blind spot. Sessions are about when. They don't know anything about where you are or what you already told your phone about that place. If your problem arrives with a location, the commute, the office, the bedroom, a time window is an approximation of what you actually mean.
Who should pay, who should skip
Pay for Opal if you like the design, have spare money, and you need a Android/Mac compatible app. It's the most complete session-based product in the category, and it's very polished.
Skip it if: your cost concious, you phone problem is tied to places rather than blocks of time, don't like the design aesthetic . Opal's sessions know when, but not where, so if the pattern you're fighting is the office, the car, or the bedroom at 11pm, a time window is only an approximation of what you mean. That gap is the specific thing we built enough. to close: apps hidden at the places you chose and the hours you set, for $49.99 a year, with a free plan that covers one place and one schedule so you can test the idea first.
Worth it, then? For the right person, clearly yes. Just be sure you're the right person before the renewal date is.
