The most common question we get: "What about Brick?" Brick is the obvious hardware comparison — same audience, similar philosophy, very different mechanics. Here's the honest breakdown.
Brick is an NFC tile, about the size of a credit-card stack. You tap your phone against it to enable or disable a list of "distracting" apps. To turn them off again, you have to physically tap the brick. If the brick is in another room, your phone is bricked until you walk over.
Thirty is an Android app that hides everything except six chosen apps behind a 20-minute wait. No hardware. Calls and texts always work. Daily 30-minute cap on the rest.
Different shape, same instinct: make the wrong thing harder to do.
| Brick | Thirty | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $59 device, free app | Free (subscription planned later) |
| Platform | iOS + Android | Android only |
| Mechanic | Tap brick = lock; tap again = unlock | Daily cap + 20-min wait per unlock |
| Friction style | Physical (walk to brick) | Temporal (wait 20 min) |
| Cap | No cap — you choose when | Hard 30 min / day, total |
| Emergency exit | Walk to brick | Friend-held rescue code |
| Replaces home screen? | No | Yes (Android only thing this works on) |
| Calls + texts during lock | Always available | Always available, don't count |
| What you lose | The brick (~$59 + shipping) | 10 seconds to install |
| What you gain | Ritual + physical object | Always-on, no friction to set up |
You want a physical object. A brick on your desk, in your bag, on your nightstand is a thing you can see and touch. It's social — friends notice and ask about it. It gives the whole thing a ritual quality that software can't.
You want hard work-or-don't-work blocks rather than time budgeting. The brick model is binary: bricked or not. The Thirty model is continuous: you have a daily budget that ticks down.
You're on iPhone. Apple doesn't allow apps to replace the home screen, so Thirty can't exist there. Brick works on iOS via Screen Time API + the NFC tap.
You can afford $59 and you find that helpful as a commitment device. Skin in the game matters. People who paid for the brick try harder to make it work.
You don't want to carry another thing. Phones already do too much. Adding a physical accessory you have to remember, charge (Brick is passive, doesn't need charging, but you DO have to keep track of where it is), and protect is friction in the wrong direction for some people.
You want a daily cap, not on/off cycles. The brick model assumes you'll have "focused" periods (bricked) and "free" periods (unbricked). The cap model assumes you should have a budget every day, regardless of what you're doing.
You want the friction to be inside the device. If you're on the tram and you want Instagram, the brick model only works if you remembered to leave the brick at home. Otherwise you tap and you're in. The Thirty model says: you're not in until you've waited 20 minutes. That's a different psychology.
You want it to be free. Thirty is free, no upfront cost. Whether free is good or bad depends on your taste — see the "skin in the game" point above.
You want messaging-app exemption. Brick's mechanic doesn't distinguish "Instagram" from "WhatsApp" — both get bricked. Thirty puts your essentials (with friction for messaging-with-feeds) in your six. Different model.
They're not really competing. Brick is hardware ritual + binary blocks. Thirty is software cap + persistent friction. People who use one rarely use the other; they're solving the same problem at different angles for different temperaments.
The good news: this category is growing. It used to be one or two niche apps. Now there's enough demand that you can pick the one that matches your psychology. Both work. The one that doesn't work is the one you don't install.
If you've tried Brick and it didn't stick, try Thirty. If you've tried Thirty and it didn't stick, try Brick. The mechanic that makes sense to you is the one that will hold.