Six apps, every price listed, every free-tier limit spelled out, and no advertising or analytics SDK in any of them. Start with the comparison table, then jump to whichever one solves your problem.
Prices are US dollars and set by us; Apple processes every purchase and regional prices vary. Verified August 2026.
Swipe the table sideways to see every column.
| App | What it is | Runs on | Free tier | Paid option | Offline |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pentire | Paint-by-stickers puzzles from your photos | iPhone, iPad · iOS 17+ | All 60 puzzles at 3 difficulties, 2 photo puzzles, unlimited generated art | Plus: $29.99 once or $4.99/mo | Everything, including photo cutting |
| Chat Local | Encrypted texting over Bluetooth mesh, no internet | iPhone, iPad · iOS 15+ | 2 conversations, 50-character messages, 20-message history | Pro: $59.99 once, $29.99/yr, $4.99/mo or $1.99/wk | All messaging; that's the point |
| Rouse | AlarmKit alarms, routines, countdowns, sleep insights | iPhone, iPad · iOS 26+ | Alarms, timers, 1 five-step voice-coached routine, 2 of 10 missions, 10 of 46 sounds, 2 countdowns | Premium: $59.99 once, $24.99/yr or $2.99/mo | Everything |
| Dogear | Speed reading with a comprehension quiz | iPhone, iPad · iOS 26+ | The whole app | None — there is nothing to buy | Everything |
| CalcBoard | Up to 8 calculators on one screen | iPhone, iPad · iOS 16+ | Basic mode, 2 panels, variables, 3 converter categories, last 10 history | Premium: $2.99 once | Everything — no currency rates to fetch |
| Scroll Clash | Top-down arcade shooter, one-handed | iPhone, iPad · iOS 15+ | All 100 levels, 6 modes, 20 bosses | Admiral: $4.99 once (coin speed only) | Everything |
Paint by Stickers
A picture becomes numbered outline slots and a tray of sticker pieces. You peel, rotate, and place until the image comes back.
The part other sticker apps don't do: Pentire cuts your photos. Your dog mid-zoomies, a favourite face, last summer's beach. The cutting runs entirely on your iPhone using Apple's on-device Vision subject masking plus Pentire's own segmentation pipeline — there is no image server, and photo import works in airplane mode, which is the practical proof. If you'd rather not supply a photo, there are 60 original built-in scenes across six collections, an on-device generator that invents new ones on demand, and a Today's Puzzle that is the same pick for every player worldwide.
No timers, no scores, no leaderboards. Hints are unlimited and free. Every cut auto-saves separately, so you can re-cut the same picture at a different difficulty without losing the version you were part-way through.
Free: all 60 built-in puzzles at Starter, Easy and Medium; unlimited generated art with 5 saved; 2 photo puzzles; Natural and Squares shapes; Photo and Flat colour looks; share codes, hints, streaks, offline play.
Plus — $29.99 once or $4.99/month: unlimited photo puzzles, Hard and Expert difficulties, Polygon and jigsaw shapes, Cartoon and Pastel looks, all 14 themes, unlimited saved puzzles. There is no free trial; the free tier is the trial.
Free: Bluetooth mesh messaging with default encryption, 2 conversations, 50-character messages, 20-message visible history.
Pro — $59.99 once, $29.99/year, $4.99/month or $1.99/week: unlimited conversations, 400-character messages, 500-message history, password-protected end-to-end encryption, message search, conversation export, themes and chat backgrounds, per-sender colours, user blocking. No plan has a free trial; locked themes, backgrounds and sender colours preview live in the app instead.
Default-tier encryption uses keys bundled in the app: it defeats passive radio eavesdropping, but treat it as strong obfuscation, not secrecy. For anything sensitive, use a password-protected conversation — even relaying phones can't read those. Conversation names and display names are broadcast to nearby app users by design, because that is how nearby discovery works, and Bluetooth is detectable radio activity. No app removes physical risk.
Offline Messaging
Text the people near you when there is no WiFi, no cell service, and no internet at all.
Chat Local turns nearby iPhones into a Bluetooth Low Energy mesh. Your message goes out over the air to whoever is in range, and their phones pass it along — up to five hops — so it reaches people you could never reach directly. There is no server anywhere in that path, which is exactly why it keeps working at Burning Man, in a canyon, on a plane, during a blackout, or when a network is deliberately switched off.
You need a connection for three things and no others: downloading the app, buying or restoring Pro, and opening a shared invite link. The QR-code invite works with no signal at all.
Alarms Routines Timers
An alarm that Silent Mode cannot mute, Do Not Disturb cannot suppress, and a reboot cannot forget.
Third-party alarm apps have historically fired through iOS notifications, which is why they get swallowed by Silent Mode and Focus. Rouse was built natively on Apple's AlarmKit from its first release, with no notification fallback at all — the same system path the built-in Clock app uses. Since iOS 26, other established apps have started adopting AlarmKit feature by feature; capabilities vary by app and version.
Once it fires, ten wake missions make sure you're actually awake, then voice-coached routines walk you through the morning step by step. It also handles HIIT and Tabata intervals, Pomodoro blocks, milestone countdowns with 31 holiday templates, and nightly sleep insights generated on-device.
Free: alarms that beat Silent Mode, timers, 2 stopwatches, one fully voice-coached 5-step routine, Math and Shake missions, 10 alarm sounds, the bedside clock, 2 countdowns, widgets, Siri, streaks and scores.
Premium — $59.99 once, $24.99/year or $2.99/month: unlimited playable routines and steps, repeat groups, unlimited countdowns, all 10 missions and unlimited chains, 46+ sounds, Smart Alarm, on-device sleep insights, custom themes. No plan has a free trial; premium themes preview for 15 seconds in the app instead.
Free, in full. No ads, no subscription, no in-app purchases, no account. Its App Store privacy label is "Data Not Collected". Generated passages and quizzes need an Apple Intelligence-capable iPhone (iPhone 15 Pro or newer); on other devices Dogear uses bundled passages that each ship with a real, hand-built quiz, and you can still paste and read anything.
Read & Retain
A speed-reading trainer that refuses to promise 1,000 words a minute, because the research doesn't support it.
Skilled adults read roughly 200–400 wpm, and past about 500 wpm comprehension measurably drops — at that point you're skimming, not reading. Most speed-reading apps measure only the speed half of that trade-off. Dogear measures both: after every passage it generates a short multiple-choice quiz from that exact text, scores it, explains each answer, and always shows retention next to pace.
The number it's training you toward is your comprehension-safe speed — the fastest pace at which you still scored 80% or better. It's a smaller number than the marketing claims, and it's a real one. Everything runs through Apple's on-device foundation model, so nothing you read leaves your iPhone.
Free: basic mode, 2 panels, named variables, length/mass/temperature conversion, last 10 history entries, bookmarks and labels, Control Center launch, keyboard support. No ads and no trial clock.
Premium — $2.99 once, forever: scientific and programmer modes, panels 3 through 8, the shared value tray, all 10 converter categories, full searchable history with CSV export, all themes and button styles. Non-consumable, and all future updates included.
Multi Calculator
Every phone calculator shows one calculation at a time. That is the whole problem.
Comparing two prices, checking your own work, or converting a unit then computing with it means memorising an intermediate result or writing it down. CalcBoard's answer is panels: independent calculators running side by side, each in whatever mode it needs. Push a result into the shared tray and pull it into another panel, or set tax=0.0825 once and use it everywhere.
Arithmetic is exact decimal rather than binary floating point, so the classic 0.1 + 0.2 problem simply doesn't occur. There is deliberately no currency conversion — rates go stale and need a network, and CalcBoard is built to work without one.
Top-Down Arcade Shooter
The gameplay in the screenshots is the gameplay in the game. That should not be a feature, and yet.
You command a squad that auto-fires at waves marching down a perspective road, dragging left and right in portrait with one hand. The decision that makes it a game rather than a screensaver: powerups sit behind destructible wooden barriers, so every few seconds you choose between killing what's shooting at you and diverting fire to unlock an upgrade.
100 campaign levels across 8 environments — street, city, bridge, ghost town, desert, spaceship, night city, creepy hallway — plus 20 bosses in Boss Rush and an endless Survival mode. All of it free. Version 2.0 removed the old subscriptions and coin packs from the game; players who had bought them keep their benefits at no further charge.
Free: every level, every mode, every boss, every theme. Nothing is gated.
Admiral unlock — $4.99 once: a permanent 7× multiplier on coins earned from levels plus +80 coins per daily check-in. Coins buy tactical boosts. It unlocks no content whatsoever. There are no coin packs, gems, energy, lives, continues, loot boxes, or battle passes — no consumable purchases exist in the app. Some retired pre-2.0 products are still listed on the App Store product page pending removal from App Store Connect; the game has no way to buy or spend them.
Pick by the problem. Sleeping through alarms → Rouse. Going somewhere with no signal → install Chat Local before you leave. Want a calm hobby → Pentire. Read for work → Dogear, which is free with nothing to buy. Juggling numbers → CalcBoard. Want a shooter that stays a shooter → Scroll Clash.
All six are free to download. Dogear costs nothing at all and has no in-app purchases. CalcBoard Premium is $2.99 once. Scroll Clash's optional Admiral unlock is $4.99 once and unlocks no content. Pentire Plus is $29.99 once or $4.99 per month. Rouse Premium is $59.99 once, $24.99 per year, or $2.99 per month. Chat Local Pro is $59.99 once, $29.99 per year, or $4.99 per month. Prices are US dollars and vary by region; Apple processes every purchase. Break-even math for each lifetime option.
They are usable products. Scroll Clash gives away all 100 levels, all 6 modes, and all 20 bosses. Dogear has no paid tier at all. Pentire's free tier includes all 60 built-in puzzles at three difficulties plus unlimited on-device art generation. Rouse's free tier includes Silent Mode-proof alarms, timers, a fully voice-coached routine, a bedside clock, and two countdowns. CalcBoard is free with two panels and three converter categories. Chat Local is free for two conversations with 50-character messages.
None. No sign-up, no email, no phone number, no profile, in any of the six. Purchases attach to your Apple ID and restore through the App Store, so there is nothing to log into and nothing to delete.
All six apps run on iPhone and iPad. CalcBoard also runs on Apple Silicon Macs and Apple Vision through iPad compatibility, and supports iPadOS Split View plus pointer and trackpad input.
Both depend on frameworks that only exist there. Rouse schedules every alarm and timer through AlarmKit, which is exactly what lets its alarms survive Silent Mode and restarts — there is no notification fallback to run on older iOS. Dogear generates passages and quizzes with Apple's on-device foundation model. The other four run much further back: Chat Local and Scroll Clash from iOS 15, CalcBoard from iOS 16, Pentire from iOS 17.
No — not on any plan, in any of the six, as of September 2026. The free tier is the trial, and unlike a trial it doesn't expire. What several of them do instead is let you preview locked content live: Rouse's premium themes preview for 15 seconds, Chat Local applies a locked theme or sender colour to a real conversation and then reverts it, and CalcBoard previews locked themes the same way. Scroll Clash's unlock gates no content, so there is nothing to try.
No. Pentire: Paint by Stickers is an iPhone and iPad puzzle app by Solutionflare, pronounced "pain-tee-ray". It has no affiliation with Pentire Drinks, the UK non-alcoholic spirits brand, with Pentair pool equipment, or with Workman Publishing's physical Paint by Sticker books. The books are excellent and have no official app; Pentire is the same hobby digitally, with pages that never run out.
Not today. All six are iOS apps. Chat Local lists Android on its roadmap; the others have no announced Android plans.
We take client projects too — iOS apps, web platforms, and internal tools — with the same engineering that went into these six.