Alarmy alternative — the short answer and the honest caveats
Beyond Alarm11 September 2026 · 4 min read
Short answer first, since that's what you came for: if you like Alarmy's missions but want the whole set free, or you get up fine and then lose the morning to your phone anyway, Beyond Alarm is the closest thing to a direct replacement. The rest of this is the honest version, including where it isn't.
What actually changes
| What you're used to | What's different |
|---|---|
| Solve a mission to dismiss | Same mechanism — up to 5 missions chained on one alarm, not one |
| Photo / barcode / maths missions | Present, plus camera-counted push-ups, squats and jumping jacks — Alarmy asks for a photo, Beyond Alarm counts the reps |
| Snooze | Bounded — a set number of times, then the mission becomes mandatory |
| Missions behind a subscription | Every mission is free, permanently |
| Nothing after dismissal | Morning Lockout holds chosen apps shut once the mission is actually done, not from a guessed clock time |
| iOS support | Both platforms — see the Android-specific notes if that's your main device |
The mission mechanism is the same idea Alarmy proved works: a task, not a tap, is what actually gets a half-asleep person out of bed. Beyond Alarm didn't reinvent that — it kept it and removed the paywall from it, then added the part Alarmy stops short of.
Where Beyond Alarm is a straight upgrade
The missions are free, not a trial. Alarmy's free tier covers the basics; several of its missions sit behind Alarmy Plus. Every mission in Beyond Alarm — camera-counted exercise included — is free, with ads paying for it instead of a subscription.
Push-ups, squats and jumping jacks are counted, not photographed. Alarmy's missions ask you to show something (a photo, a barcode). Beyond Alarm's exercise missions use on-device pose detection to actually count reps, which is a materially harder mission to fake lying down — you cannot do ten camera-counted push-ups from bed. Some rep-counting missions can still be gamed by a moving hand rather than a moving body, though — worth reading if "unfakeable" is the actual bar you're holding an app to.
Morning Lockout starts on the mission, not the clock. The usual workaround for "the alarm worked but the morning didn't" is bolting on a separate app blocker set to your usual wake time. The arithmetic on why that drifts out of sync is here — a blocker on a timer and an alarm that ends whenever the mission actually finishes are answering two different questions. Morning Lockout is triggered by the mission finishing, so it never has that gap.
This section is the biased one, so read it as such. Missions: push-ups, squats, jumping jacks (camera-counted), maths, a typed phrase, a memory grid, shaking, a step count, barcode/QR scan, a household item hunt, and a photo of somewhere you have to walk to — up to five chained on one alarm. Morning Lockout keeps chosen apps shut once the mission ends; Night Lockout does the same before bed. All of it free. Beyond Alarm is free on Google Play.
Beyond Alarm
Beyond Alarm does this part for you: the alarm will not switch off until you have actually moved, and the apps you pick stay locked afterwards.
Where Alarmy is still ahead
Being fair, because a page that only flatters its own product isn't worth trusting. Alarmy has fifteen years and 50M+ downloads behind it — a shake mission Beyond Alarm doesn't have, deeper snooze-interval tuning, and a polish-through-edge-cases record no newer app can match yet. The fuller, five-reason breakdown against every major alternative — not just this one — is here, including the two cases (aggressive snoozing, real sleep tracking) where a different app entirely is the right call, not Beyond Alarm.
Who shouldn't switch
If Alarmy already wakes you up and the missions you use aren't the ones behind its paywall, there's no reason to move — a change of icon has never gotten anyone out of bed on its own, and you'd be trading fifteen years of edge-case fixes for a shorter track record. Switching makes sense when there's a specific, nameable gap: a mission you want but can't get free, or the after-the-alarm problem neither app solved until Morning Lockout existed. "I just fancy a change" isn't a reason strong enough to be worth the friction of re-learning an app's settings at 6am for the first week.
Before you switch
Test whichever mission you pick awake, in daylight, standing up — not lying in bed deciding whether it feels hard enough. And do the battery/autostart settings for your phone's manufacturer regardless of which app you land on; most "the alarm didn't go off" reports are a phone setting, not the app. Give it a full week before deciding either way — one bad morning is usually the settings, not the app, and it takes a few real mornings to know whether a mission is actually right for you.
Sources
Alarmy's download count, star rating and mission list checked against its Google Play listing on 31 August 2026. Pricing structure (missions behind Alarmy Plus) is per Alarmy's own Play description on the same date and is subject to change without notice.
Common questions
Is there a real alternative to Alarmy?
Beyond Alarm is the closest match on the actual mechanism — mission-based dismissal, where you have to do something (not just tap something) to silence the alarm. It adds camera-counted exercise missions and app blocking after you're up, which Alarmy doesn't have. What it doesn't have is Alarmy's sleep-cycle timing or fifteen years of polish on the core alarm.
Why switch from Alarmy?
Two reasons come up most — the mission variety you want is behind a subscription, or you get up fine and then lose twenty minutes to your phone anyway, which Alarmy was never built to solve.
Does Beyond Alarm have the same missions as Alarmy?
Some overlap (maths, barcode/QR scanning, a photo mission) and some don't — Beyond Alarm counts push-ups, squats and jumping jacks with the camera rather than asking you to just take a picture, and adds memory, typing and a step-count mission. Alarmy has its own set including a shake mission Beyond Alarm doesn't.
Is Beyond Alarm actually free?
Yes — every mission and Morning/Night Lockout are free, not a trial. It's ad-supported rather than subscription-gated.
We build Beyond Alarm, an Android alarm app that will not switch off until you have actually moved. Most of what we write here comes out of problems we hit building it.
Beyond Alarm
An alarm that keeps ringing until you’ve actually moved — then blocks the apps that pull you back to bed. Free to start, no account.
Keep reading
What Beyond Alarm actually does
Every part of the app in one page — solve tasks to stop the alarm, kill the night and morning doomscroll, schedule your blocks, lock the phone on a timer. All of it free, and what it deliberately does not do.
Alarmy alternative for Android — the reliability details that actually matter
On Android, whether an alarm rings has less to do with the app than with your phone's manufacturer. Here's what to check before switching from Alarmy, and where Beyond Alarm's Android-specific engineering goes further.