Comparison
Opal alternative: Opal vs Cohesive
Two different bets about what the problem is. Both are installable today, so this comes down to which premise you actually believe.
The short answer
Opal blocks apps on phone and desktop, runs a lockable focus timer, and summarises your sleep, focus and rest into an Opal Score with Focus Gems for milestones. Cohesive does none of that — no blocking, no timer, no score, no achievements — because it treats the moment as information about you rather than as behaviour to suppress. Both are available now, so the choice isn't availability: it's whether you want the hour reduced or want to know what the hour was for.
Before anything else, the thing that decides this for most readers:
Opal and Cohesive are both installable today, and they disagree about what the problem is. Opal puts a wall between you and the app. Cohesive never blocks anything and instead catches the moment you already reached. If you want the app closed, that settles it — use Opal. The rest of this page is about where the approaches actually differ.
What Opal does
From Opal’s own pages, as of 31 July 2026:
- Blocking. Blocks apps of your choice on phone or desktop.
- Focus Timer. Pick what to focus on, set a length, and lock in until the timer runs out.
- Opal Score. Combines signals from sleep, focus and rest into a single wellbeing measure.
- Focus Gems. Unlocked for milestones — focusing ten hours, inviting friends, consistent use.
- Platforms. iPhone, Android, Mac.
It’s a polished, well-regarded app with an Apple Design Award, and the focus timer in particular is a clean implementation of a genuinely useful idea.
What Cohesive does
Cohesive is a digital detox app that never promises you’ll consume less.
- Catch. You record what you were doing and what was around it. Two taps. That alone is a complete session.
- One question. If you continue, it asks a single question you can answer by remembering something that happened — never a quiz about who you are.
- Decide. At the end, everything you said comes back word for word. You keep a sentence, write your own, or keep nothing.
- A map. What you keep is a short, editable, exportable list of sentences about what matters to you — in your words, because you typed or tapped them.
No blocking. No timer. No score. No streak. No notification designed to pull you back.
The actual disagreement
It isn’t features. It’s what the two products think the scroll is.
Opal treats it as behaviour to be reduced, and reduces it well. Everything follows from that premise: block the app, time the focus, score the week, reward the streak.
Cohesive treats it as evidence, and refuses to rank it. The same hour of the same app is fine for one person and a flare for another, and nothing observable in the act distinguishes them — so it never classifies, scores, or tells you what a behaviour means.
Both premises are defensible. They just produce products that share almost nothing.
Side by side
| Opal | Cohesive | |
|---|---|---|
| Available now | Yes | Yes |
| Blocks apps | Yes, phone and desktop | Never |
| Focus timer | Yes, lockable | No |
| Screen-time score | Yes — Opal Score | No number, anywhere |
| Streaks / achievements | Focus Gems | None |
| What accumulates | Focus history and score | Sentences you chose to keep |
| Platforms | iPhone, Android, Mac | iPhone, Android, Mac |
| Free tier | Yes | Catching moments and managing your map stay free; first finding free |
| Paid | $99.99/yr, or $399 lifetime | €92.99 once, or €14.99/mo |
Prices are in different currencies and are not converted here. Opal’s are from their pricing page on 31 July 2026; Cohesive’s are from its own pricing page.
Which one to pick
Pick Opal if you want the app closed and you know it, you work in timed focus blocks, or a score or a streak is genuinely motivating for you.
Pick Cohesive if you’ve already used blockers and the hour came back with nothing to put in it, you don’t want your behaviour scored, or the honest description of your problem is “I don’t know what I’d rather be doing with this evening” rather than “I use this app too much.”
They’re not really competing for the same minute. It’s entirely coherent to use Opal to get an afternoon back and want something else to work out what the afternoon is for.
Questions people ask
Is Cohesive an Opal alternative?
Only in the sense that it solves a different problem, not a cheaper version of the same one. Cohesive has no blocking and no scoring, so anyone who specifically wants those mechanisms should stay with Opal. If what you want is to understand the moment rather than suppress it, Cohesive is the alternative — and both are installable today, so you can try either.
Which is cheaper, Opal or Cohesive?
They are priced in different currencies, so this is a comparison of shapes rather than an exact conversion. Opal Pro is $99.99 billed annually or $399 as a one-time lifetime payment, alongside a free tier. Cohesive's first finding is free with no card and no clock, and after that it is €92.99 once or €14.99 a month, with no annual plan. The structural difference is that Cohesive's one-time price is its main option rather than a premium tier.
Does Cohesive block apps like Opal does?
No, and it isn't a missing feature that will arrive later. Cohesive never blocks an app, locks a device, or stands between you and anything. The product's position is that the same hour means different things for different people, so suppressing it uniformly gets one of those people wrong.
Does Cohesive have anything like the Opal Score?
No. There is no score, no streak, no achievement, and no number anywhere that summarises your behaviour. That's a deliberate constraint rather than an unbuilt feature: a score can say how long, and it can't say whether it was worth it.
Where these facts come from
Every claim about another company's product on this page comes from that company's own public pages. Prices and features change; each link records the date it was checked. If something here is out of date, tell us at hello@cohesivejournal.com and it gets corrected.
- Opal — features and Opal Score — checked 2026-07-31
- Opal — pricing plans — checked 2026-07-31
- Cohesive — pricing and product scope — checked 2026-08-29
Last reviewed: · Written by Alejandro Carbajo